Seventy-nine people, including 19 children, have been killed in western Afghanistan after a passenger bus carrying refugees, recently deported from neighbouring Iran, caught fire after colliding with a truck and motorcycle, according to provincial government spokesman Ahmadullah Muttaqi and local police.
Police in Herat province said on Tuesday that the accident was due to the bus’s “excessive speed and negligence”.
The returnees are part of a massive wave of Afghans deported or forced out of Iran in recent months.
The accident took place a day after Iranian Minister of Interior Eskandar Momeni announced that a further 800,000 people would have to leave the country by next March.
The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran and en route to the capital Kabul, provincial official Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. He added that all the passengers boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala, a border crossing point.
Al Jazeera’s Wilson Dizard reports.
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