At least 78 people killed as bus collides with fuel truck in western Afghanistan

The Guardian

20 hours ago

Seventy-eight people have died in western Afghanistan in a collision between a bus carrying Afghans who had recently been deported from Iran and two other vehicles.
The bus hit a motorcycle and a truck transporting fuel on Tuesday night, causing an explosive fire in Guzara district, Herat province. Two of the three survivors later died of their injuries, officials said on Wednesday.
Seventeen children were killed, according to the army spokesperson Mujeebullah Ansar, though a provincial police source put the number at 19. Many of the bodies were unidentifiable, said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, a chief physician at the military hospital.
'There was a lot of fire … There was a lot of screaming but we couldn't even get within 50 metres to rescue anyone,' Akbar Tawakoli, a witness, said.
Cleanup teams were working to remove the torched shell of the bus and twisted wreckage of another vehicle on the roadside early on Wednesday.
'I was very saddened that most of the passengers on the bus were children and women,' another witness said.
The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital, Kabul, Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, a Herat provincial government spokesperson said.
The central Taliban government called for an investigation into the incident. 'It is with deep sorrow that we mourn the loss of numerous Afghan lives and the injuries sustained in a tragic bus collision and subsequent fire in Herat province last night,' it said.
At least 1.5 million people have returned to Afghanistan so far this year from Iran and Pakistan, both of which have sought to force migrants out after decades of hosting them, according to the UN migration agency.
Many of those deported spent years outside the country and arrive without a place to go, have few belongings, and face steep challenges to resettle in a country gripped by endemic poverty and high unemployment.
The state-run Bakhtar news agency said Tuesday's collision was one of the deadliest in recent years.
Deadly crashes are common in Afghanistan, in part due to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.
In December, two bus collisions involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52 people.
In March 2024, more than 20 people were killed and 38 injured when a bus collided with a fuel tanker and burst into flames in southern Helmand province.
Another crash involving a fuel tanker took place in December 2022, when the vehicle overturned and caught fire in Afghanistan's high-altitude Salang Pass, killing 31 people.