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A bus from the El Paso-based Los Paisanos line lies on its side Friday after a crash south of Corona, N.M. New Mexico State Police said 21 of the 48 people on the bus were injured.

RUIDOSO - Twenty-one people were injured Friday when a bus traveling to El Paso skidded off icy U.S. Highway 54 in New Mexico.

The bus, owned by Los Paisanos Tour Co. of El Paso, crashed at 7:45 a.m. about 15 miles south of Corona in Lincoln County. It carried 48 people.

According to New Mexico State Police, the bus skidded while coming around a curve. It clipped a semi-trailer cattle truck and flipped onto its side. The truck, driven by James Marx, 49, of Prairie Du Chien, Wis., steered into a ditch to avoid a head-on collision.

The bus was headed to El Paso from Denver.

State police said roads were snow-packed and slick at the time of the crash.

Two of the injured, including bus driver Jose Medina, 71, of El Paso, were listed in critical condition at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo before they were transported to University Medical Center in El Paso.

A Gerald Champion Medical Center spokeswoman said the hospital received 12 patients. Most were discharged Friday.

Lincoln County Medical Center in Ruidoso received nine patients. Eight were treated and released, a hospital spokesman said.

The ninth patient was transferred to Gerald Champion.

The 48 passengers "had an angel riding with them," said Lincoln County EMS Director Jim Stover. "There was a cattle truck going north, and he saw the bus skidding on the ice and put his truck into the ditch to keep from hitting them. He saved a lot of lives."

Stover said the Carrizozo schools

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sent a bus to the crash scene to transport the uninjured passengers to Corona, where the Corona School opened its gymnasium to provide temporary shelter.

The crash was the second serious one involving Los Paisanos Tour Co. in the same area in the past two years.

On Dec. 26, 2008, a packed bus headed from El Paso to Colorado rolled over and crashed north of Corona in Torrance County. Two passengers were killed, and 46 people were injured.

Earlier this month, an El Paso jury ordered Los Paisanos to pay more than $132 million to the victims of a fatal crash on a snowy Colorado road in 2005.

The jury found that the van carrying 11 passengers had bald tires and no safety belts. That crash killed two people and injured several others.