Sawt Falasteen - Afghanistan bus crash death toll rises to 78

Seventy-six people died in the accident in Herat province's Guzara district on Tuesday night when the passenger bus hit a motorcycle and a truck transporting fuel, causing an explosive fire, officials and eyewitnesses said.

Two of the three survivors later died of their injuries, officials said on Wednesday.

"Two injured individuals from last night's incident succumbed to severe injuries, increasing the number of victims to 78," a statement by the provincial information department said, citing representatives of the military hospital that received victims.

Seventeen children were among those killed, according to army spokesman Mujeebullah Ansar, though a provincial police source put the number at 19.

Many of the bodies were "unidentifiable", said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, 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 (160 feet) to rescue anyone," 34-year-old eyewitness Akbar Tawakoli told AFP.

"Only three people were saved from the bus. They were also on fire and their clothes were burnt."

Clean-up teams worked to remove the torched shell of the bus and twisted wreckage of another vehicle on the roadside early on Wednesday, an AFP journalist saw.

- 'Children and women' -

"I was very saddened that most of the passengers on the bus were children and women," another eyewitness, 25-year-old Abdullah, who like many Afghans only uses one last name, told AFP.

The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital Kabul, Herat provincial government spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP.

The central Taliban government called for an investigation into the accident.

"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 in a statement.

At least 1.5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since the start of 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 returning spent years outside the country and arrive without a place to go and carrying few belongings, facing steep challenges to resettle in a country gripped by endemic poverty and high unemployment.

The state-run Bakhtar News Agency said Tuesday's accident was one of the deadliest in the country in recent years.

Deadly traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.

In December last year, two bus accidents involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52.

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 serious accident 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.

B.AbuZeid--SF-PST