Parents reacted with fury on Wednesday night after a school bus overturned in the Karpas peninsula village of Yialousa and 28 children and the bus driver were hospitalised.

The bus had, according to the north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli, overturned due to a brake failure.

Family members gathered outside northern Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital to await news regarding the children’s condition, with some speaking to television channel Kanal Sim.

One mother claimed that while the bus only had a capacity of 20 people, 40 people were on board when it crashed.

“Our children have been going to school like this for three or four years … They put 40 people on a 20-person bus. My daughter said today, ‘mum, there are normally 20 of us on the bus, but today there were children sat in the aisle because of the crowd’,” she said.

She added that one of the reasons for the overcrowding was that another bus had broken down, and that children from the bus which had broken down were instructed to get on the one which would eventually overturn.

A number of children on the bus which broke down had reportedly decided not to get on board the one that overturned as they “knew that the brakes of that bus were broken”.

The mother interviewed by Kanal Sim said the bus “had been like this for years”, and that “when it rained, water would leak from the ceiling, and when it was summer, they would sit on that bus with 20 people packed together like sardines.”

One father who was interviewed was keen to question who would be held accountable if someone had died as a result of the crash.

“Two of my children were on the bus … How many times has my son said, ‘dad, I swear we are going to die’? The brakes of the bus did not work … This is the government’s problem, the government needs to take action on this. There is no inspection. Children narrowly escaped; some have broken ribs. The only good thing is that no one died. If they had, who would be accountable for this?”

Another father was scathing of the north’s ruling coalition, and its largest party the UBP.

“We have said many times that a solution must be found for these buses. All the buses in Rizokarpaso and Yialousa are like that. Will they be repaired when we are dead? … The driver today is a member of the UBP’s Rizokarpaso branch. How long will this UBP reign continue? It is time to say ‘stop’,” he said.

He added that the same bus had been involved in two separate accidents before Wednesday, and that on another day, children had been taken to school on a bus built in the 1950s.

“How will Arikli, [‘education minister’ Nazim] Cavusoglu, or the prime minister [Unal Ustel] account for this? We will no longer send our children to school by bus,” he said.

Arikli also spoke to Kanal Sim about the accident, and placed the blame for the incident at the feet of Cavusoglu and his ‘ministry’.

He said that at present, school buses in the north are being run as a “profit source” and that the system is “open to serious abuse”, with transport providers signing contracts directly with the ‘education ministry’.

“The inspection stations do not have sufficient equipment. Vehicle inspections are done manually. Even the worst vehicles can pass the inspection,” he said, before going on to say that “the vehicles are very old”, and that he would present the matter to the north’s cabinet.

Cavusoglu released a statement of his own, stressing that “our children survived the accident with minor damage” and that “none of our children have suffered permanent injuries or are in mortal danger”.

“The cause of the accident is being investigated in detail by the police. Our ministry is evaluating all measures to prevent such incidents from happening again, and whatever is necessary will be done,” he said.

He also said that the Erenkoy high school in Yialousa, the school which the children on board the bus attend, would be on “administrative holiday” on Thursday and Friday.

Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar also made a statement, saying the crash “should serve as a lesson for us to be more careful”.

As of Thursday morning, 25 children have been discharged from hospital. Three children and the bus driver, named as 32-year-old Yahya Gungor, remain in hospital.