AT least 21 people were killed and 38 injured on Sunday when a bus collided with a fuel tanker truck and burst into flames in southern Afghanistan.
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.
“Twenty-one people were killed… in a traffic accident between a passenger bus, a tanker and a motorbike” on a main highway through Grishk district in southern Helmand province, Mohammad Qasim Riyaz, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told AFP.
Of the 38 people injured, 11 were seriously hurt, according to the provincial information department.
The accident occurred in the early hours of the morning on a key highway that sees traffic between the western city of Herat through southern provinces to the capital Kabul, provincial officials said.
The passenger bus was travelling from Herat to Kabul when it first collided with a motorbike carrying two people, killing both riders, Helmand traffic management officials said, according to the information department.
The bus driver lost control and crashed with a tanker truck travelling in the opposite direction, sparking a fire.
The accident killed three people on the tanker and 16 bus passengers.
“When the bus hit the tanker, it pierced the tank, which burst into flames,” said one of the survivors, Ghulam Sarwar, speaking to AFP at a hospital in provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
“The flames got bigger and bigger and all the passengers in the front were burned. But at the back a window was broken and people were able to escape by jumping out,” he added.
“If the window hadn’t been broken, every passenger would have been killed.”
