23 people died and 37 were injured in a road accident in eastern Tanzania on Friday.
A collision between a bus and a truck left 23 dead and 37 injured on Friday in eastern Tanzania, one of the deadliest road accidents in recent years in the country, according to a new report released on Saturday. “The death toll now stands at 23” after one person died of his injuries, Tanzanian police chief of operations and training Liberatus Sabas told reporters on Saturday.
“Three injured were transferred to Muhimbili National Hospital (in the economic capital Dar es Salaam, editor’s note) for further treatment,” he added. A previous report, communicated the evening before by the presidency, reported 22 dead and 38 injured. The accident took place around 4:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. GMT) near the town of Melela Kibaoni, in the Morogoro region, about 200 km west of Dar es Salaam.
“The driver of the truck, which was traveling from the port of Dar es Salaam to the Democratic Republic of Congo, was passing a motorcycle when the two vehicles collided head-on,” said Morogoro regional police official Fortunatus Muslim on Friday. , attributing the origin of the accident to the careless driving of the driver.
The bus had departed from the southern town of Mbeya and was due to reach the coastal town of Tanga, in the northeast of the country, according to Fortunatus Muslim.
Photos on social networks and the Tanzanian media show the front of the two vehicles smashed under the violence of the impact.
“Sad” President
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan expressed her condolences to those bereaved by the accident on Friday evening.
“Saddened by the death” of these people, she also urged “road users to respect traffic rules” in a message on Twitter.
“This is a serious accident and we cannot let this continue… We will take action to stop this,” Fortunatus Sabas said.
On Monday, four people were killed in another road accident involving a bus linking the town of Tunduma (southwest), bordering Zambia, to Dar es Salaam.
Tanzania is regularly bereaved by deadly road accidents.
In May 2017, 35 people, including 32 students, died in a bus accident attributed to excessive speed.
In 2015, 42 people died in a collision between a bus and a truck.
One of the bloodiest accidents dates from 2006, when a bus left the road and plunged from a bridge into a river about twenty kilometers from Arusha (north), killing 54 people. The vehicle carried 74 people for a capacity of 26 seats.
Last month, traffic police chief Wilbroad Mutafungwa announced that 1,245 people had been killed in road accidents in 2021, and 2,023 others injured.
He had underlined the drop in the number of accidents, which fell from 3,732 in 2018 to 1,187 in 2021.
In its latest report on road safety in the world dated 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that official Tanzanian statistics for 2016 listed 3,256 road deaths, but estimated that this figure was between 13,000 and 19,000.
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