At least 73 people killed after a bus collided with a truck in Ghana

A bus hit a cargo truck north of Ghana's second city Kumasi overnight, killing at least 73 people on Wednesday evening.

The head-on crash, which left 13 people seriously injured, occurred 420km north of the capital Accra when a Metro Mass Transit coach bound for the northern town of Tamale from the city of Kumasi hit a truck loaded with boxes of tomatoes, regional police chief Maxwell Atingane said.

"Many of the passengers on the bus died on the spot,"Atingane said.

A witness said the scene was "pathetic and gory" with passengers trapped in the bus wreckage.

"There were human bodies strewn around," said George Blah, a resident.

Several of the passengers with severed body parts were trapped in the mangled bus as the locals struggled to cut the vehicles to retrieve the dead and those alive.

The locals who had to resort to chainsaws to cut the bus in order to reach the trapped passengers believe all the occupants of the Metro Mass perished.

Atingane said initial reports suggested a mechanical failure on the bus caused the accident but police were investigating.

Bismark Owusu Fosu, medical director at the Kintampo hospital, said some of the injured had been evacuated by air for treatment in Kumasi, Ghana's second city. 

President John Mahama commiserated with families who have lost loved ones , describing the motor accident as a "very sad news" in a Tweet and Facebook post, Mahama assured that the “emergency services working to attend to injured passengers."