At least nine individuals lost their lives on Monday in southeastern Iran when a bus collided with a fuel lorry, according to state media reports. This marks the second major road accident with mass casualties in just a few days.
Mohammad Mehdi Sajjadi, head of the Red Crescent Society in the Sistan-Baluchestan province, informed the official IRNA news agency that “nine people were killed, and 13 others sustained injuries in the collision involving a bus and a fuel lorry near Zahedan.”
Just two days earlier, on Saturday, ten people tragically died when a bus plunged into a ravine in the western Lorestan province of Iran.
Iran is notorious for its poor road safety record, with over 20,000 fatalities resulting from road accidents between March 2023 and March 2024, as reported by the judiciary’s Forensic Medicine Organisation and cited in local media.
In August, a bus carrying 28 Pakistani Muslim pilgrims en route to Iraq crashed in central Iran, resulting in their deaths.
The impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province, which shares borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has witnessed some of Iran’s most devastating accidents. In 2004, a catastrophic collision between a petrol tanker and a bus led to an enormous blaze, claiming the lives of more than 70 people.
