DHAKA (AFP) - Twenty people were killed and at least 40 were injured in eastern Bangladesh on Monday after two buses collided head on, police said.

The accident happened after the driver of one bus, bound for the capital Dhaka, lost control and crashed into another bus travelling in the opposite direction, local police chief Abdur Rab told AFP.

He said one of the buses fell into a 20-foot-deep (six-metre) road side ditch.

"The recovery operation has been completed. Two cranes were used to remove one of the buses from the ditch. We have now recovered 19 dead bodies from the wreckage and another died in hospital."

About a dozen of those injured had been admitted to nearby hospitals with critical injuries, Rab said.

Bangladesh's highways are notorious for fatal accidents, which kill nearly 5,000 people a year, according to a study by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology's Accident Research Centre.

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