2024-03-17 14:50:07
Lashkar Gah (Afghanistan) (AFP) – At least 21 people were killed and 38 others were injured on Sunday as a result of a collision between a bus, a motorcycle and a tanker truck, which led to these vehicles catching fire, in southern Afghanistan, whose roads often witness fatal accidents.
Published on: 17/03/2024 – 15:50
3 minutes
The spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, Muhammad Qasim Riaz, told Agence France-Presse that “21 people were killed early this morning in an accident between a bus, a tanker truck and a motorcycle” on a road in the province.
The state’s information department later confirmed that 38 people were injured.
The accident occurred on the main road linking Herat in western Afghanistan, to Kandahar (south) and then to the capital, Kabul, in the centre. According to traffic officials in Helmand Province, the bus heading from Herat to Kabul collided head-on with the motorcycle, killing the bike driver and his passenger, in the Greshak area.
Then the bus driver lost control and collided with a tanker truck transporting gasoline, which was traveling in the opposite direction and heading from Kandahar to Herat.
Three people aboard the tanker truck were killed, and 16 passengers on the bus were also killed.
The state governor’s spokesman reported that the bodies of many victims were charred.
Pictures posted by the state’s Information Department on social media showed a charred bus and the tanker truck’s cab twisted due to the flames.
The authorities worked quickly to open the road.
The Information Department reported that 11 of the 38 wounded were seriously injured. Some of those with minor injuries left the hospital at midday.
Broken window
Ghulam Sarwar was inside the bus and survived because he managed to jump from a window.
“Inside the bus, we were all refugees expelled from Iran,” he told Agence France-Presse in front of Lashkar Gah Hospital, the state capital.
He added, “When the bus collided with the tanker, it penetrated the tank and caught fire.”
He said, “The flames rose and all the passengers at the front of the bus were burned. But at the back, a window was shattered and people were able to escape by jumping out.”
He continued, “If this window had not been broken, we would all have been dead.”
He reported that the accident occurred around three in the morning (Saturday at 22:30 GMT).
“People were screaming, it was horrific,” he added, adding that women and children were on the bus.
This survivor attributed the accident to “an error committed by the bus driver.”
“He was driving on the wrong side of the road and collided with the other vehicle,” he added.
Another survivor, Muhammad Reda, told AFP that the passengers were asleep during the accident.
“The bus caught fire and everyone was screaming,” he continued, adding that passengers in the last seven or eight rows were able to jump out of a window, and some of them were injured.
He added, “Everyone was trying to escape. Everyone at the front, including women and children, were burned.”
Deaths often occur on Afghanistan’s roads, which lack proper maintenance due to the repercussions of the conflict in the country and the lack of respect for traffic laws.
In December 2022, 31 people were killed in the Salang Pass in the Hindu Kush mountain range as a result of a tanker truck overturning, causing a fire to break out in other vehicles, in the area located at an altitude of more than 3,800 meters.
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