Nine killed in Iran as bus, fuel truck collide: state media

13 others injured in bus-fuel truck collision near Zahedan, says head of Red Crescent Society of province

AFP

December 23, 2024

This handout picture provided by the Iranian Mizan News Agency on January 9, 2020 shows Iranian Red Crescent paramedics recovering bodies at the scene of a bus accident that plunged off a mountain road into a ravine in Mazandaran province. — AFP

TEHRAN: At least nine people were killed on Monday when a bus collided with a fuel truck in Iran's southeast, state media reported, the second mass casualty road accident within days.

Head of the Red Crescent Society in Sistan-Baluchestan province Mohammad Mehdi Sajjadi, told the official IRNA news agency that "nine people lost their lives and 13 others were injured in the accident in which a bus collided with a fuel truck near Zahedan".

On Saturday, 10 people were killed when a bus plunged into a ravine in Iran's western Lorestan province.

Iran has a poor road safety record, with more than 20,000 deaths in accidents recorded between March 2023 and March 2024, according to figures from the judiciary's Forensic Medicine Organisation cited by local media.

In August, 28 Pakistani Muslim pilgrims en route to Iraq were killed when their bus crashed in central Iran.

Impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, saw one of Iran's deadliest accidents in 2004, when a gasoline tanker collided with a bus, sparking a massive fire that killed more than 70 people.