Sirsi: Five persons were killed after a car, in which they were traveling, collided with a public transport bus near Bandal Petrol pump on the Sirsi-Kumta highway in Uttara Kannada district on Friday.

The accident occured when a Maruti Swift car traveling from Kumta to Sirsi collided head-on with a government bus en route from Sirsi to Kumta.

The impact of the collision was so severe that the car is complete crushed and extensive damage to the front portion of the bus. Remarkably, the bus driver emerged unharmed, and all 60-plus passengers onboard also escaped without injuries.

The deceased victims have been identified as Ramakrishna Rao Babu Rao (71), Vidyalakshmi (67), Pushpa Mohan Rao (62), Suhas Ganesh Rao (30), all residents of Mangalore. The car driver, Arvind (45), hailed from Chennai. The group was en route to attend a wedding ceremony at Raghavendra Kalyan Mantap in Sirsi.

The Sirsi rural police has registered a case related to the accident.