Lima - At least 18 people have been killed in separate explosions in Peru that appear to have been caused by fireworks, 14 of them when a passenger bus burst into flames, according to authorities.
"There are 14 dead, including two children, after an explosion then a fire," police chief Maximo Reyna said late on Thursday from the town of Chosica, 50km east of the capital Lima.
He said another 12 people, some of them seriously wounded, were pulled from the bus, which appeared to have been carrying a load of fireworks.
In the second incident, a police van filled with fireworks seized from an illegal factory exploded in the south-eastern town of Juliaca, killing four police and wounding another 21 people, the national police said in a statement.
The two incidents did not appear to have been related.
AFP
