MADRID: Six people died and two were injured after a passenger bus careened off a bridge and plunged into an overflowing river in northwestern Spain, emergency services said on Sunday.

Two survivors - the vehicle’s 63-year-old driver and a female passenger - were pulled out of the river by firefighters with rope and taken to nearby hospitals with varying degrees of injury. The driver tested negative for alcohol and drugs, a police spokesperson told Reuters.

The spokesperson added that the search-and-rescue operation around the bridge had now concluded, while engineers attempted to find a way to safely recover the wreckage from the river Lerez.