LAGOS AUGUST 20TH (NEWSRANGERS)-At least 17 children are among 76 people that have died after a horror crash between a bus, a motorbike and a lorry. The bus, which was carrying refugees, burst into a fireball after colliding with the other vehicles.
Horrific photos from the scene in Afghanistan’s Herat province show the bus on fire as passers-by try desperately to douse the flames.
Ahmadullah Muttaqi, the Taliban’s director of information and culture, said the bus was carrying Afghan refugees that had been deported from Iran. Everyone aboard the bus was killed, as well as two people from the other vehicles, he said.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesman for the Herat provincial government, said: “Seventy-six citizens of the country […] lost their lives in the incident, and three others were seriously injured. All the passengers were migrants who had boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala.”
Herat police said the accident happened because of the bus driver’s “excessive speed and negligence”. The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned by Iran to the Afghan capital of Kabul.
In recent months Iran has stepped up its deportations of undocumented Afghan migrants who have fled conflict in their homeland. The country had previously given a July deadline for undocumented Afghans to depart voluntarily.
Anti-Afghan sentiment has risen in Iran recently after millions fled to the country since the 1970s, with major waves coming during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Refugees have faced systemic discrimination.
Since a brief war with Israel in June, Iranian authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, alleging national security concerns. But critics say Tehran may simply be looking for scapegoats for its security failures against Israeli attacks.
More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some had been in Iran for generations.
Experts warn Afghanistan lacks the capacity to take in the growing number of nationals forcibly returned to a country under Taliban government. It is already struggling with a large influx of returnees from Pakistan, which is also forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.
Arshad Malik, country director of Save the Children Afghanistan said: “The return of so many people is creating an additional strain on already overstretched resources, and this new wave of refugees comes at a time when the Afghanistan is starting to feel the brutal impacts of aid cuts.”
The state-run Bakhtar News Agency said Tuesday’s accident was one of Afghanistan’s deadliest in recent years. Tragically,traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan due to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.
In December, two bus accidents involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52.
Daily Star
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