Twenty-one people have been killed and 38 others injured after a bus collided with an oil tanker and a motorbike in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
Helmand Provincial officials said the traffic accident happened Sunday on the Herat-Kandahar highway in the Yakhchal area of Grishk district.
“On Sunday morning, 21 people were killed and 38 people were injured due to a collision between a tanker, a motorcycle and a passenger bus,” the provincial information department said in a post on X.
Near a dozen of the injured people are in critical condition.
The Information and Culture Directorate of Helmand Province reported that a passenger bus collided with a motorbike, killing both riders, and subsequently crashed into an oil tanker causing an explosion and fire which burned down both vehicles.
Helmand’s governor spokesman Mohammad Qasim Riyaz told AFP the collision between the bus and the tanker caused the vehicles to ignite.
Local traffic management officials said the bus driver lost control and crashed into the oil tanker coming from the opposite direction from the southern city of Kandahar to Herat, sparking the fire.
According to a statement released by local officials, 16 passengers on the bus, 2 on the motorbike, and 3 in the oil tanker died in the incident.
Cleanup crews were ready on the site to remove the debris, according to officials
Images shared by the information department on social media showed charred, twisted metal scattered across the highway.
One image showed the tanker’s crushed cabin.
Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan where poor roads, dangerous driving habits and lack of regulation create a deadly combination for both drivers and passengers.
In December 2022, another serious traffic accident involving an oil tanker took place, when the vehicle overturned and caught fire in Afghanistan’s high-altitude Salang pass, leaving 31 people dead and dozens more injured.
