At least 79 dead after bus crashes carrying Afghans deported from Iran

At least 79 people were killed when a bus carrying Afghans deported from Iran crashed on one of the country’s most dangerous highways on Tuesday night, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Officials described the crash as one of the country’s deadliest traffic incidents in years, and comes as hundreds of thousands of deported Afghans are streaming across the Iranian-Afghan border.

Nineteen children were among those killed and there were only two survivors, both of whom were injured, said Mufti Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, in a statement to The Washington Post. Other officials put the death toll at 81.

Hamdullah Fitrat, a Taliban spokesman, told The Post the bus collided with a Mazda truck and a motorcycle, describing the crash as an accident.

In videos shared by officials, firefighters are seen trying to extinguish a wreckage that is fully engulfed in flames. According to a statement released by Herat province officials, many victims appeared to be women and children, but were so “badly burned that their gender cannot be identified.” The statement added that the bus may also have crashed into a truck carrying fuel barrels.

Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a local government spokesman in western Afghanistan, said in a post on X that authorities are committed to a “thorough inquiry” into Tuesday’s crash.

The accident happened near Herat, the biggest city in western Afghanistan and the capital of the province by the same name.

The city has been the primary entry point for more than a million Afghans who have either been forcibly deported or pressured to leave by Iranian authorities this year, according to the United Nations. The deportations accelerated in the aftermath of Israel’s June airstrikes on Iran, when the Iranian government accused some refugees of being spies for Israel, fueling a wave of xenophobia and suspicion.

Over half a dozen Afghans who have been deported from or are hiding in Iran have told The Post in interviews that they believe these allegations are made up to force Afghans out of Iran, and are part of a broader pattern of state-led harassment.

Forced back into Afghanistan, many refugees face an uncertain future. A U.N. report issued last month warned that some returnees face “serious human rights violations,” including “torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and threats to personal security.” The Taliban-run government, which has continued its campaign of political and social repression since seizing power in August 2021, has denied the allegations.

Upon their arrival in Afghanistan, many refugees travel by bus from Herat via Kandahar to the Afghan capital of Kabul. The journey can take almost 24 hours, passing numerous government checkpoints and circling half of Afghanistan on the country’s so-called “ring road.”

Afghan authorities have seen a rising number of road accidents on that highway, as the absence of suicide attacks and safety concerns has led to a proliferation in domestic travel since the takeover of the Taliban regime four years ago.

Emergency, an organization that operates several hospitals in Afghanistan, said last year that the number of road traffic accidents have sharply surged since 2021. The organization blamed roads that are “in need of improvement and restructuring” and a transportation sector “weakened by decades of war.”

The Taliban-run government says it is heavily investing in road construction and repairs, and is cracking down on fraudulent transportation companies.