According to Taliban government sources, 52 people were killed and 65 injured in two bus accidents on a highway across central Afghanistan that involved a fuel tanker and a truck on Thursday.
Hamidullah Nisar, the provincial administrator of information and culture, stated on X that the accidents occurred in Ghazni province late on Wednesday on the same highway that connects southern Kandahar city with the capital Kabul. He did not provide an exact number of fatalities or injuries from each accident.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the main government spokesman, said, “We learned with great regret that two fatal traffic accidents occurred on the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, in which 52 of our compatriots were killed and 65 others were injured.”
According to Nisar, two buses struck a truck in the eastern district of Andar and a petrol tanker close to Shahbaz hamlet in central Ghazni.
He added that rescue crews raced to the scene and took the injured—some in “serious condition”—to the hospital.
Afghanistan has a high rate of traffic accidents, partly because of unsafe highway driving, a lack of regulations, and bad roads from decades of war.
In December 2022, a fuel tanker toppled and caught fire in Afghanistan’s high-altitude Salang Pass, resulting in another tragic tragedy that claimed 31 lives.
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