Collision of Buses and Fuel Truck in Afghanistan Kills More Than 50

KABUL, Afghanistan — More than 50 people were killed on Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province when two buses collided with a fuel truck, which then exploded, officials said. Scores of others were injured, many of them critically.

The crash in Ghazni was bad even by the standards of Afghanistan’s notoriously dangerous mountain highways. A total of 111 people were either killed or injured, said Hamidullah Nawroz, the head of Ghazni’s provincial council, but because the victims were taken to many hospitals in different cities, and many died on the way, the number of fatalities was hard to determine.

A bus full of passengers tried to pass the slow-moving fuel tanker on a narrow highway in Mukur District around 6 a.m. Sunday and crashed head-on into another fully loaded bus, Mr. Nawroz said. Both buses then collided with the tanker, which exploded and engulfed all three vehicles in flames.

Estimates of the number of fatalities ranged from 50 to 76, and many feared that the death toll could be even higher. Ismail Kawusi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Health, said that there were 140 passengers on the buses but that rescue workers had identified only 50 bodies so far. Many of the remains were badly burned, and body parts were scattered around the accident site.

“It takes time, and only forensic medicine will be able to identify them,” Mr. Kawusi said.

In Kabul on Sunday, the government hanged six Taliban prisoners convicted of various terrorism offenses — the first such executions of President Ashraf Ghani’s administration.

The executions had been expected for some time, after the Taliban’s Haqqani network detonated a large truck bomb on April 19 at the National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence agency, killing 64 people.

Mr. Ghani vowed in a speech afterward to retaliate with military action and the execution of Taliban prisoners. During his tenure, which began in September 2014, the government had executed only one prisoner, a notorious crime boss, although about 300 men are on death row.

All six who were executed Sunday were members of the Taliban or theHaqqani network, a Taliban faction that has operated independently, according to a statement from the National Directorate of Security.

The president signed the order for the executions, according to a statement released by his office, after “repeated requests from the families of victims of terrorist attacks.”

The statement continued, “The signing happened after a close examination of the fairness of the sentencing process, in accordance with Afghanistan’s human rights obligations.”

The executions reflected a lack of optimism among Afghan officials about efforts to restart the peace process with the Taliban, who have refused to attend recent sessions hosted by Afghanistan’s neighbors.

The Taliban responded to the executions by threatening “to make military targets out of all those institutions involved in the martyrdom of prisoners,” according to a statement issued by Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group. “They will not be able to breathe one breath in peace, and their relatives will not be able to live with confidence, either.”

(Source : nytimes.com)

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