It is the deadliest accident in recent years for the country. In Senegal, the president, Macky Sall, has just decreed a three-day national mourning following a collision between two buses which left forty dead and dozens injured on the night of Saturday January 7 to Sunday January 8.
The accident took place at 3:15 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. Paris) on Sunday near the town of Kaffrine, regarding 250 kilometers southeast of the capital, Dakar, according to the National Fire Brigade. The head-on collision made “thirty-six seriously injured and forty-nine slightly injured”according to a new provisional assessment communicated by the government.
The Head of State, expected on the spot in the followingnoon just like the Prime Minister and several members of the government, said to himself “deeply saddened by the tragic road accident”. The three-day national mourning is due to begin on Monday. An interministerial council will be held on Monday to “taking firm measures on road safety and public passenger transport”said the Head of State.
The bursting of a tire at the origin of the tragedy
“According to the first elements of the investigation (…)a bus assigned to public passenger transport, following a tire burst, left its trajectory before colliding head-on with another bus coming in the opposite direction”, said the public prosecutor of Kaolack. The victims were transported to Kaffrine hospital, the carcasses of the buses cleared and the road reopened to traffic, according to the firefighters.
The main Senegalese opponent, Ousmane Sonko, candidate for the 2024 presidential election, announced on Twitter that he was postponing a fundraising operation because of the accident and called on the authorities to “give priority attention” to road insecurity, a “a scourge with disastrous human, social and economic consequences for the country”.
Frequent accidents
Bus accidents are frequent in Africa, due to the poor maintenance of vehicles, the poor state of the roads but also to driving errors, many motorists being holders of permits bought from corrupt inspectors, without having ever attended driving school.
Twenty-one people were killed on Saturday evening in East Africa in a bus accident on the border between Kenya and Uganda, Ugandan police said on Sunday. Among the people who died in this accident, thirteen are of Kenyan nationality, eight are Ugandan. According to the police, forty-nine people were injured. According to the first elements of the investigation, the driver would have lost control of the vehicle due to excessive speed.
The Ugandan government is preparing new measures to improve road safety following a spike in fatalities during the holiday season. According to the Ugandan police, 104 road accidents were recorded in just three days, from December 30 to 1is January, killing thirty-five and injuring one hundred and fourteen.
Last week, at least fourteen people were killed and seventy-three injured in a collision between two buses in Yamoussoukro, in central Côte d’Ivoire. Eighteen people have died in a collision between two vehicles in northern Nigeria.
