Bus Crash in Argentina Kills Over 40 Police Officers

The bus was on its way to San Salvador de Jujuy, a city about 175 miles from the border with Bolivia, carrying 51 border police officers.

It was traveling along Route 34, a road that is poorly maintained in some sections and has deep potholes, especially near the bridge, in a rural area called Balboa, according to Francisco Marinaro Rodó, the province’s civil defense secretary. In an interview with Todo Noticias, a television news channel, Mr. Marinaro Rodó said that pavement close to bridges can be particularly susceptible to damage from heavy trucks braking as they approach.

Local officials said the crash was most likely accidental. Mr. Urtubey told the local news media that investigators had established that one of the bus’s tires blew out yards before the bridge, causing the driver to lose control. News photos of the scene showed the bus laying upside down in the ditch. But Mr. Urtubey denied that the blowout was caused by a pothole. “In this spot, the state of the road had nothing to do with the accident because it’s in good condition,” he said. “Yes, there are problems further on and further back, but not here.”

President Mauricio Macri offered condolences to the victims’ families during a speech on Monday. “We have to improve the country roads, so that these things don’t keep happening,” the president said.

Mr. Macri, who took office on Friday, has promised to modernize Argentina’s neglected northern provinces. As part of a program called the Belgrano Plan, he wants to spend $16 billion improving transportation in the region, including upgrading hundreds of miles of Route 34. The route runs nearly 1,000 miles from the port city of Rosario on the Paraná River to the Bolivian border at Yacuíba.

“The road is full of potholes,” Gustavo Díaz, the head of a volunteer fire department that took part in the emergency response from Rosario de la Frontera, a town near the crash site, told local reporters. “You have to proceed with caution, because we’ve seen various vehicles have accidents or overturn there. Surely, the driver was tired and did not see the pothole.”

Gustavo Solís, the mayor of Rosario de la Frontera, told the local news media, “Those of us who know the area try not to travel there at night.”