PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — A runaway bus ploughed into a crowd of people in the Haitian city of Gonaives early yesterday, killing 34 people and injuring 15 others, officials said.

The accident occured some 150 kilometres (90 miles) outside Port-au-Prince.

“First, the bus ploughed into two pedestrians, killing one of them, and injuring the other,” Marie-Alta Jean Baptiste, head of Haiti’s civil protection office, told AFP.

The driver then rammed into a band of street musicians as it tried to speed away, leaving 33 of them dead in a scene of ghastly carnage.

Emergency workers transported the injured to the hospital, while police tried to control an angry crowd that gathered at the accident scene.

“The people who were not victims of the accident tried to burn the bus with the passengers inside,” said Faustin Joseph, civic protection coordinator for the department of Artibonite, where Gonaives, the regional capital, is located.

“The bus, the passengers and the driver were all placed into the care of the local authorities,” Joseph said.