At least 28 people, many of them children, drowned yesterday after their bus plunged into a canal in India, police said, in the latest tragedy on the world's deadliest roads.

Police said they retrieved 28 bodies from the private passenger bus after it veered off the road and fell into the canal in the Mandya district of the southern state of Karnataka.

Police could not provide the exact number of passengers on board or the cause of the crash but said the driver was apparently speeding.

Road crashes in India claim the lives of more than 150,000 people each year.