Two Nepalese students and bus driver die in Kurihara highway crash

Sendai – Three people, including two Nepalese students, died when a truck slammed into a bus that had stopped due to engine trouble on the shoulder of a highway in northeastern Japan, police said Wednesday.

All of the bus passengers — 39 students from Nepal and one from Bangladesh — were outside of the vehicle when it was rear-ended by the truck around 8:10 p.m. Tuesday night on the Tohoku Expressway in Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, killing two of the Nepalese and the driver of the bus.

The students included some studying Japanese in Miyagi who were on their way to part-time jobs in Ichinoseki in neighboring Iwate Prefecture.