HERAT: At least 76 people, including 17 children, were killed in a traffic accident in western Afghanistan, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
The victims were mostly Afghan migrants recently deported from Iran. They were travelling to Kabul on a bus that caught fire after colliding with a truck and a motorcycle in Herat province on Tuesday night, said Ahmadullah Mottaqi, the Taliban’s director of information and culture in Herat.
“All passengers on the bus died along with two others in the other vehicles,” he said.
Provincial governor’s spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP that the passengers had boarded in Islam Qala, a border town near Iran. Police in Herat blamed the crash on “excessive speed and negligence” of the bus driver.
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Deadly traffic accidents are frequent in Afghanistan, where roads remain damaged after decades of conflict and traffic laws are poorly enforced.
Millions of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan since the 1970s, with large waves during the Soviet invasion of 1979 and after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
Iran has in recent months accelerated deportations of undocumented Afghan migrants, many of whom face systemic discrimination. Tehran had earlier set a July deadline for undocumented Afghans to leave voluntarily.
