Up to 43 schoolchildren were on board a school bus that overturned and crashed into a field in County Down, Northern Ireland, on Monday.
The double-decker bus veered off the road and toppled onto its side in a field 17 miles east of Belfast on Monday afternoon.
At least four people have been taken to hospital after the incident, which happened on the Ballyblack Road East near the village of Carrowdore.
Pupils from Strangford College, a co-educational secondary school in Carrowdore, were on board the bus.
Dylan Lee, a 12-year-old in year eight, said he had been sitting on the top deck.
“The bus hit a post and it started to stall and went down this hill,” he told the PA news agency at the scene, where he was with his mother, Stacey. “It just started shaking. I closed my eyes and then I opened them and I was on the floor.”
Dylan, who was left with a lump and a cut on his head, said he escaped the bus when a passing motorist used a hammer to smash the windows. “I was crawling under stuff like railings and school bags and stuff,” he added.
Mrs Lee said that, when her son phoned her immediately after the crash, she “could hear him screaming that he had crashed and I could hear all the kids in the background screaming. It was awful”.
The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service declared a major incident and said it had treated injured passengers at the scene, taking four to hospital.
“Initial reports indicated that approximately 70 people were on board the bus,” it said in a statement. “This figure has been revised to 43 and a driver.
“NIAS has assessed and treated patients at the scene, with four currently requiring further treatment at hospital. The remainder have either been, or are in the process of being, assessed with a view to discharging at the scene.”
Photographs from the scene showed emergency workers gathered around the light blue bus.
The Belfast Telegraph reported that children had to be pulled out from the windows of the vehicle after the crash. One eyewitness told the newspaper the scene was “like a battlefield”.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland described it as a “serious road traffic collision” and declared a major incident. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service said it had dispatched a specialist rescue team to the scene.