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Forty-four people were killed, and almost as many were injured, when two buses crashed into each other on a highway south of Tehran, the capital of Iran, late on Monday night.
The buses were travelling on a highway between Tehran and Qom, a city located 80 miles from the capital. Colonel Ardeshir Jamshidi-rad, the head of traffic police in the province of Qom, said that the bus travelling in the direction of Tehran suffered a tire puncture and the driver lost control of the vehicle. Though the details are not yet clear, the bus broke through the barrier separating traffic, then crashed into an oncoming bus.
The buses erupted into flames, killing scores of passengers. Survivors were taken to a hospital in Qom for treatment. Nearly 40 people were injured in the accident.
Some reports in Persian suggest that the fire that gutted the buses was made worse by a faulty electrical system, though the cause of the crash and the subsequent blaze are still under investigation.
Reuters reported that statistics compiled by UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) show that road accidents occur in Iran at a rate 20 times higher than the world average, with nearly 28,000 people killed and 300,000 people injured and disabled annually in the country of 75 million.
That said, the AFP noted that road deaths have fallen in the past two years, even with an increase in the number of cars in circulation, largely due to a greater police presence on the road, as well as a steep rise in fines for dangerous driving.
