Syria bus crash kills at least 35
DAMASCUS: At least 35 people were killed on Saturday (Jul 25) when two passenger buses collided on a desert highway in central-eastern Syria, state media said.
State news agency SANA, citing a health ministry official, said 30 others were injured in the collision on the Damascus-Deir Ezzor road.
The interior ministry said the crash involved a bus carrying internal security forces personnel and a civilian bus, without specifying how many casualties came from its ranks.
State television broadcast footage showing a bus on fire and debris scattered across the highway. Military helicopters were deployed to airlift casualties from the scene.
Emergency and disaster management minister Raed Al Saleh called it one of the deadliest road accidents in Syria in recent years by number of victims.
He said the crash "places a shared national responsibility on all of us to work to prevent such painful incidents from recurring", according to SANA.
Al Saleh added that it underscored the need to address Syria's road infrastructure, which he said was burdened by years of neglect and war damage.
Earlier this month, five people were killed and dozens injured, most of them Lebanese, when a bus carrying pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia overturned in southern Syria's Daraa province.
Years of civil war have left much of Syria's road network in poor condition. The director of road transport in Damascus, Moaz Najjar, was quoted by state television as saying authorities had ordered road maintenance in the eastern region be treated as a priority.
Najjar said most roads had not undergone maintenance in 15 years.
Last year, at least 12 people were killed when a bus collided with an oil tanker in northeastern Syria. In 2020, at least 32 people died when a fuel tanker crashed into two buses on a road between Damascus and Homs province.
