Nearly 80 people, including a majority of migrants back from Iran, died on Tuesday, August 19, evening in a road accident in Afghanistan. A coach has entered “Violently” Collision with a motorcycle and a truck that transported fuel, causing a fire, said the police of the Guzara district, in the west of the country, bordering Iran, accusing the driver of the coach « vitesse excessive » and “Negligence”.
The latest assessment communicated Wednesday by the army reported 78 people, after two of the three survivors identified died of their injuries. Local security forces believe that 17 to 19 of the victims were children, according to various provisional assessments.
At the scene of the accident, near the city of Herat, a correspondent from the France-Presse agency (AFP) saw the coal carcass of the coach a few hours after the accident, as well as the debris of the other two vehicles. “There was a big fire, the firefighters took two hours to arrive”Akbar Tawakoli, a 34 -year -old witness, told AFP. “Many people shouted, but we couldn’t approach fifty meters to save anyone. »»
“When we saw that all the remains were charred, that no one could be saved, I was very saddened, because most of the coach passengers were children and women”said to AFP another witness, Abdallah, 25, who did not give his surname. The remains are not identifiable, regretted the chief doctor of the Al-Farouq military hospital, Mohammed Janane Moqadas.
“Great sadness”
This is one of the deadliest road accidents in recent years, according to the official news agency Bakhtar. The Taliban government has expressed its “Great sadness” and called the “Competent transport authorities to promptly gather information concerning this accident”According to a press release published by his spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid.
The coach was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to Kabul, more than a thousand kilometers away, Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the provincial governor, told AFP. “All passengers were migrants who were mounted on the vehicle in Islam Qala”a border post with Iran, he added.
Iran gave until the beginning of September to the 4 million undocumented Afghans present on its territory to return to their country. Tens of thousands of people cross the border every day, including many children, often in the greatest destitution, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
