Hanoi - Four women were killed and six people injured Tuesday morning when a truck without brakes carrying 10 people plunged into a ravine in a northern mountainous province of Vietnam, police said. The accident happened after a 26-year-old man jumped on an old German-made truck to transport nine other people without realizing that his brother had removed the truck's brakes a day earlier to repair them.
The truck ran off the road while going down a hill in Ha Giang province, 320 kilometers north of Hanoi, according to local policeman Phung Vinh.
"Four women were killed immediately from multiple injuries and six others were seriously injured after the truck plunged into a valley 30 meters deep," Vinh said.
The driver, Nguyen Tho Hieu, had borrowed the truck from his brother without asking and despite the fact that he had no driving license, the policeman said.
He also offered rides to several other people.
"The driver is still in hospital with head injuries, and we will arrest him after he is discharged from the hospital," Vinh said.
The truck had been banned from the roads a year previously by local police but it had been illegally used for transport building materials since, according to the policeman.
Traffic accidents killed 8,950 people in Vietnam in the first eight months of this year, up 6 per cent against the same period last year, according to government statistics.
