The number of deaths of a collision between a bus transporting Afghan migrants returning from Iran and two other vehicles in western Afghanistan has increased to 78, provincial officials announced on Wednesday.
Seventy-six people died in the accident in the Guzara district of Herat Province on Tuesday evening when the passenger bus hit a motorcycle and a truck carrying fuel, causing explosive fire, said officials and eyewitnesses.
Two of the three survivors died later from their injuries, officials announced on Wednesday.
“Two people injured in last night incident succumbed to serious injuries, increasing the number of victims to 78,” said a statement from the provincial information department, citing representatives of the military hospital who received victims.
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Seventeen children were one of the people killed, according to the army spokesman Mujeebullah Ansar, although a provincial police source put the number at 19.
Many bodies were “not identifiable,” said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, chief doctor of the military hospital.
“There was a lot of fire … There was a lot of cries, but we couldn’t even go less than 50 meters (160 feet) to save anyone,” Akbar Tawakoli, a 34 -year -old witness, Akbar Tawakoli told AKBar.
“Only three people were saved from the bus. They were also on fire and their clothes were burned.”
The cleaning teams worked to remove the inverted shell of the bus and twisted from another vehicle on the side of the road early Wednesday, an AFP journalist.
“I have been very saddened that most of the bus passengers are children and women,” another eyewitness told AFP, which, like many Afghans, told AFP.
The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital Kabul, said provincial government spokesman Herat, Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, told AFP.
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The Central Government of the Taliban called for an investigation into the accident.
“It is with deep sadness that we mourn the loss of many Afghan lives and the injuries suffered in a tragic bus collision and a subsequent fire in the province of Herat last night,” he said in a statement.
At least 1.5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since the start of this year of Iran and Pakistan, who both sought to force migrants after decades of their reception, according to the United Nations Migration Agency.
Many of those who come back have spent years outside the country and arrive without a place where to go and transport little property, faced with large challenges to reinstall in a country seized by endemic poverty and high unemployment.
The Bakhtar news agency managed by the state said that Tuesday’s accident was one of the country’s most deadly in recent years.
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Deadly traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, partly due to bad roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on motorways and lack of regulation.
In December of last year, two bus accidents involving an oil tanker and a truck on a highway through the center of Afghanistan killed at least 52.
In March 2024, more than 20 people were killed and 38 injured when a bus collided with an oil tanker and caught fire in the south of Helmand province.
Another serious accident involving an oil tanker took place in December 2022, when the vehicle overturned and caught fire in the Salang high altitude in Afghanistan, killing 31 people.
