At least nine people are dead after a vehicle carrying members of a New Mexico university’s golf team collided with a pickup truck in Texas, the school said.
Nine passengers including the team’s coach were on the bus involved in the fatal crash, the University of the Southwest said in a statement.
Two passengers from the bus are in critical condition.
A driver and passenger in the pickup were also both killed.
The vehicles collided on Tuesday night in Andrews County in west Texas, just after 20:00 local time.
“It’s a very tragic scene,” Sergeant Steven Blanco of the Texas department of public safety told local TV station KWES-TV. “It’s very, very tragic.”
Six students and a faculty member were killed, Mr Blanco said, along with two people in the pickup.
The bus, a Ford Transit passenger van, was carrying members of the both men’s and women’s golf teams from a golf tournament, authorities said. The other vehicle involved was a Dodge 2500 pickup truck.
The Ford bus was travelling northbound, while the Dodge Truck was driving southbound.
“For unknown reasons, the Dodge pickup- drove into the northbound lane and struck the Ford passenger van head-on,” Mr Blanco said. “Both vehicles caught fire and burned.”
The golf teams had been returning from a tournament at Midland College, about 300 miles west of Dallas.
The university is “shocked and saddened” by the loss, the school said in a statement.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Texas Governor Greg Abbott both expressed their condolences following the crash.