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Another eight
people were injured in the collision on a country road near
Puisseguin in the Gironde region about 60km (35 miles) east of
Bordeaux, the local prefect's office said in a statement.
The bus was carrying about 50 pensioners south to the Bearn
region from their homes in the village of Petit Palais and
surrounding hamlets, all just a few kilometers away from the
crash site, said officials.
A grainy photo on BFMTV showed smoke rising from the burnt out
shell of the bus on a narrow, forested bend.
A spokesman for the interior ministry said that, as far as he
could tell, all the passengers were French and from the region.
President Francois Hollande, speaking on a visit to Athens, said
he had been "plunged into sadness by the tragedy" and Prime
Minister Manuel Valls and other ministers were heading to the
crash site.
It was the most deadly road accident in France since 53 people,
mostly children, died in a bus crash in Burgundy in July 1982,
according to the independent road safety organization
Association Prevention Routiere.
Stricter road regulation and lower speed limits followed, and
road deaths in France have fallen steeply since. According to
official statistics, more than 16,000 people were dying on the
roads every year in the early 1970s. In recent years the death
toll has fallen below 4,000.
(Additional reporting by Claude Cannelas in Bordeaux; Chine
Labbe in Paris and Jean-Baptiste Vey in Athens; Writing by
Andrew Callus and Michel Rose; editing by Andrew Heavens)
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