MOSCOW (AP) \u2014 A tour bus carrying Chinese tourists plunged through the ice on Russia\u2019s Lake Baikal, killing eight people, officials said. <\/p>\n
One of the Chinese tourists managed to escape from the bus, which was crossing the frozen lake on Friday, Irkutsk regional Gov. Igor Kobzev wrote in a Telegram post on Saturday. He said the dead included seven Chinese tourists and the driver. <\/p>\n
The bus plunged into a 3-meter (10-foot) -wide ice crevasse, Russia\u2019s Emergencies Ministry reported. The lake is 18 meters (59 feet) deep at the site of the accident, it said. The ministry said rescuers used underwater cameras before embarking on a diving operation.<\/p>\n
The regional prosecutor\u2019s office said a criminal probe had been opened. The Irkutsk tourism office reported on Saturday that the bus tour had been run by an unregistered operator.<\/p>\n
Lake Baikal, the world\u2019s deepest freshwater lake, is one of Russia\u2019s key tourism attractions. Numbers of Chinese visitors to the country soared in recent years, after Moscow and Beijing introduced a mutual visa-free regime.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, sent condolences to his Chinese counterpart, according to an online statement published on Saturday on the ministry\u2019s website. <\/p>\n
According to the statement, Lavrov told Wang Yi that Russian authorities \u201care conducting a full investigation\u201d and expressed hope that the accident \u201cwill not negatively impact the positive dynamics of bilateral tourism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOSCOW (AP) \u2014 A tour bus carrying Chinese tourists plunged through the ice on Russia\u2019s Lake Baikal, killing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":535580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[2696,52903,57,82886,261220,154584,50,257,31131,30628,13217,103,107],"class_list":["post-607653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-accidents","tag-automotive-accidents","tag-general-news","tag-glaciers","tag-igor-kobzev","tag-lake-baikal","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-sergey-lavrov","tag-travel-and-tourism","tag-wang-yi","tag-world","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116113185603383285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}