About 19 passengers died on Saturday when a commercial bus conveying a bride and other wedding guests plunged into a river while attempting to cross a broken bridge between Gwalli village and Gummi town in Zamfara State.

The victims were travelling from Fass village in Gummi Local Council to Kebbi State to deliver the bride to her husband after the wedding ceremony.

Eyewitnesses said the driver, unfamiliar with the bridge, attempted to avoid the collapsed section, which had been temporarily filled with sandbags and stones by villagers.

According to Ishiak Ahmed, the bus slipped off the makeshift filling and overturned into the river, trapping the passengers.A relative of one of the victims, identified as Usman, said the bus was overloaded and that the driver panicked when he heard the vehicle scraping against the temporary filling of the washed-away part of the bridge.

Seventeen bodies have so far been recovered, while two remain missing. The bride and a few passengers who had stepped out of the bus before the incident survived.