At least 90 people died in southeastern Iran when a fuel truck lost control and crashed into a police post, with the explosion engulfing other trucks, cars and buses, the Iranian Red Crescent said yesterday.
"Ninety bodies have been recovered, but the death toll could rise further," a Red Crescent official in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, told the student news agency ISNA.
PHOTO: REUTERS
He said 114 injured had also been evacuated from the scene of the accident, which occurred at a police post near Nosrat Abad, some 110km west of Zahedan late Thursday night.
The flames engulfed six buses and five other trucks, two of which were carrying tar, causing a massive inferno, state television reported. It also quoted the Red Crescent as saying that up to 200 people may have been killed.
Zahedan's governor, Heydar Ali Nuraye, said it was impossible to immediately give an accurate toll as a number of bodies and blackened human remains had yet to be recovered.
According to the television, the tanker caught fire immediately after crashing, sending the flames spreading over a perimeter of around 50 meters. State television showed footage of carbonized bodies lying amidst a blackened scene.
It said the cause of the fuel tanker crash had yet to be determined, although one possibility was that the driver lost control of his truck on a steep road approaching the police post.
The truck reportedly hit an electricity pylon and then the police post, where the other vehicles were waiting in line.
The roads around Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, are dotted with police checkpoints, mostly there to check for drugs.
The state news agency IRNA said most of the dead were women who had stayed in the passenger buses while their husbands were being searched by police.
Sistan-Baluchestan is situated on the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and serves as a major transit point for narcotics being smuggled into Iran and to Europe.
Fuel smugglers who sell subsidized Iranian fuel to Pakistan and Afghanistan are also active there.
Iran's roads are already considered to be among the most dangerous in the world. More than a quarter of all cars are over 20 years old, and drivers in general seem to display suicidal tendencies when behind the wheel.
Close to 100,000 people have died in road accidents over the past five years, and during the last Iranian year from March 2003 to March 2004, 25,772 were killed.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including