School bus crash in Uganda kills at least 20 children, one adult

A school bus carrying pupils home from a trip to Sipi Falls veered off the road and overturned in Kapchorwa District in eastern Uganda, killing at least 20 children and one adult. The crash, which happened late Thursday night and was later reported in Chekwatit village, left at least a dozen others injured and sent shock through a school system that parents expect to move children safely.

The pupils were from King David Junior School, identified in multiple reports as based in Kampala and Ndejje. The bus belonged to the school and was returning from an educational tour to the scenic waterfall area when it lost control, overturned and came to rest on its side. Initial accounts said the driver lost control, and police continued examining whether speed, fatigue, road conditions or vehicle maintenance contributed to the wreck.

The death toll remained fluid in the immediate aftermath. Reuters said 20 pupils and one adult died, while some later local coverage put the toll at 21. The Ugandan Red Cross shared images and video showing injured children being taken to hospital in the back of a pickup vehicle, underscoring how quickly a routine school outing turned into a mass-casualty emergency in a district far from major trauma centers.

Uganda moved quickly to contain the risk of another disaster. The government and the Ministry of Education suspended all school outings and trips nationwide on Friday after the crash, while police began investigating the circumstances of the rollover. BBC coverage described the wreck as one of Uganda’s deadliest road accidents involving children in recent years, a grim marker of how often school transport failures become national tragedies before rules change.

The crash has revived hard questions about oversight that are familiar in Uganda and other places where buses carry children on roads that can be dangerous even in normal weather. Road safety reviews and government briefings have long pointed to rising motorisation, weak enforcement and infrastructure gaps as factors that increase crash risk. In a case involving schoolchildren, those weaknesses are not abstract: they determine whether a trip ends at home or in a hospital morgue.