At least 76 people were killed on Tuesday night when a passenger bus collided with a motorcycle and a fuel truck in western Afghanistan’s Herat province.
Herat police said the accident occurred in the Ghazra district near the provincial capital, blaming “excessive speed and driver negligence.” The vehicle was carrying Afghan migrants recently returned from Iran and travelling from the Islam Qala border crossing to Kabul.
Provincial governor’s spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP that the collision first involved a motorcycle, before the bus struck a fuel-filled truck, triggering a massive fire. Only three people on the bus survived. Two people in the truck and both riders on the motorcycle were also killed.
Eyewitnesses reported that several hours after the crash, the charred wreckage of the bus and other vehicles remained scattered along the road.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) recently reported that at least 1.5 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan this year, many forced out under pressure from authorities.
Traffic accidents are frequent in Afghanistan, largely due to poor road conditions, unsafe driving and weak enforcement of traffic laws. In December last year, two separate bus crashes in central Afghanistan claimed at least 52 lives.