BANGKOK   -   Rescuers worked to recover children’s bodies from the charred wreckage of a school bus on Oct 1 after an accident turned the vehicle into an inferno, with at least 23 dead. A devastating blaze tore through the bus on a highway in a northern Bangkok suburb as it carried 38 children – ranging from kindergarten age to young teenagers – and six teachers on a school trip. The victims’ bodies were so badly burned that officials were unable to quickly give a precise death toll.

But Lieutenant-General Trairong Phiwpan, the forensic science commissioner, told reporters later in the day that 23 bodies had already been identified. Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said 21 people escaped from the blaze.

Rescue workers put up screens around the wreckage to shield firefighters and investigators as they began recovering bodies.

“Some of the bodies we rescued were very, very small. They must have been very young in age,” Mr Piyalak Thinkaew, who is leading the search, told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus.

“The kids’ instinct was to escape to the back, so the bodies were there,” he said.

He said many of those who survived jumped out of the bus windows.

But some of the children who made it out suffered horrific burns to their faces, mouths and eyes, doctors treating them told the local media.

The bus was one of three carrying children from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam school in the northern province of Uthai Thani on a field trip to a science museum in northern Bangkok.

A video posted on the school’s Facebook page just hours before the tragedy shows the group of youngsters in orange uniform shirts stopping at the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya. The disaster began when one of the bus’ tyres burst on the highway at past noon, sending it crashing into a barrier and triggering the inferno, rescuers said.