Two people were killed and 18 others injured when a six-wheel bus carrying a group of workers crashed into a roadside concrete barrier before plunging into a canal in the Bang Bo district of Samut Prakan province Saturday night.

Quoting accounts from some of the workers, police say that the bus, which was carrying more than 20 employees of the Kim Pack company, based in the Welco industrial estate, was travelling at high speed and, because there was no street lighting at a bridge, the driver might not have seen the barrier and crashed into it.

Several construction workers nearby rushed to the rescue and managed to pull everyone from the semi-submerged bus. They were sent to three hospitals in the district.

It is not known as this stage whether the driver was injured, as police try to establish the cause of the accident.