At least 35 Pakistani Shiite pilgrims touring to Iraq have been killed and 15 others injured Wednesday when a bus carrying them overturned at a checkpoint in central Iran.
The crash occurred Tuesday night time within the central Iranian province of Yazd, mentioned Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, an area emergency official, in accordance with the state-run IRNA news company.
Another 23 folks suffered accidents within the crash, 14 of them severe, he added. He mentioned all of the bus passengers hailed from Pakistan.
There have been 51 folks on board on the time of the crash outdoors of town of Taft, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Iranian state tv later broadcast pictures of the bus, turned the other way up on the freeway with its roof smashed in and all its doorways open. Rescuers stepped gingerly via the damaged glass and particles littering the highway.
In the state TV report, Malekzadeh blamed the crash on the bus brakes failing and an absence of consideration by its driver.
In Pakistan, media reviews quoted an area Shiite chief, Qamar Abbas, saying as many as 35 folks had died within the crash. He described these on the bus as coming from town of Larkana in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi expressed his condolences over the deaths.
“We are deeply saddened by the lack of treasured human lives within the bus accident in Iran,” he mentioned.
Iran has one of many world’s worst site visitors security information with some 17,000 deaths yearly. The grave toll is blamed on huge disregard for site visitors legal guidelines, unsafe autos and insufficient emergency companies in its huge rural areas.
The pilgrims had been on their method to Iraq to commemorate Arbaeen.
Arbaeen – Arabic for the quantity 40 – marks the loss of life of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, by the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces within the Battle of Karbala, in the course of the tumultuous first century of Islam’s historical past.
Hussein was seen by his followers because the rightful inheritor of the prophet’s legacy. When he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate, he was killed within the battle, cementing the schism between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
Pilgrims collect in Karbala, Iraq, in what’s thought to be the biggest annual public gathering on the earth. The occasion attracts tens of tens of millions of individuals every year.
A separate bus crash early Wednesday in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province killed six folks and injured 18, authorities mentioned.
Source: www.dailysabah.com