Afghanistan: 17 children among 76 dead as bus catches fire after collision with truck in Herat

The death toll from a collision between a bus carrying Afghan migrants returning from Iran and two other vehicles in western Afghanistan has risen to 76, a provincial official said on Wednesday.

“Seventy-six citizens of the country… lost their lives in the incident, and three others were seriously injured,” Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, Herat provincial government spokesman, said in a statement.

The dead were transferred to a military hospital, with more than a dozen children among those killed, army statements said.

Many of the bodies were “unidentifiable”, said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, chief physician of Al-Farooq Army Corps Hospital.

Police in Guzara district outside Herat city, where the accident took place on Tuesday night, said the bus collided with a motorcycle and a truck carrying fuel, sparking a fire.

An AFP journalist on Tuesday night saw the burnt shell of the bus on the road hours after the accident.

The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital Kabul, Saeedi told AFP on Tuesday.

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 facing 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.

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.