LAREDO, Texas -- A charter bus headed to a casino crashed in far South Texas on Saturday, killing eight people and injuring more than 40, authorities said.

Webb County officials told CBS affiliate KENS in San Antonio the accident happened on U.S. Highway 83 north of Laredo at around 1 p.m. Saturday.

Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ricardo Rangel said the bus, identified as belonging to OGA Charters, originated in the Rio Grande Valley and was headed to a casino in Eagle Pass, about 125 miles northwest of Laredo.

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The fire department described it as a rollover involving just one vehicle. The 44 passengers who were injured were taken to hospitals in Laredo and Dimmit County, KENS reported.

"The driver of the bus lost control and rolled over," Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Conrad Hein said. "Everything's real preliminary right now."

Hein said the driver was among the survivors. His name and the names of passengers were not immediately available, Hein said.

The trooper said it was raining Saturday morning but it was uncertain if that was a factor in the crash. He said no other vehicles were in the area at the time.

"Our troopers are going to look into what happened but it's going to take us some time," he said of the investigation. "We just know the driver lost control."

State transportation officials closed the highway for several hours.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to investigate the crash. The team was expected to arrive on Sunday.

The bus company is based in San Juan in Hidalgo County. There was no answer at the bus company and no one immediately responded to a message left there.

The crash is one of the deadliest bus accidents in Texas in the last several years, including one in January 2015 when two prison guards and eight inmates were killed after their prison bus struck a piece of displaced highway guardrail west of Odessa. The bus fell about 20 feet before striking a Union Pacific freight train that happened to be passing beneath the highway.

Seventeen passengers died in 2008 near Sherman when their bus plunged over a highway bridge on their way to a religious retreat in Missouri. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the crash was caused when a retreaded tire on the right front axle was punctured by an unknown object.

Although the retread itself wasn't the cause, the panel noted that the tire was affixed to the front axle illegally, the bus company didn't have the authority to leave Texas after failing an inspection three months earlier, and the company that inspected the bus wasn't equipped to judge whether it was roadworthy.

The owner of the Houston bus company was charged with making false statements but avoided prison in 2014 after a federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation in a plea agreement.