A bus carrying Shiite pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq crashed in central Iran, resulting in the deaths of at least 28 people, an official reported on Wednesday.
The incident occurred Tuesday night in Yazd province, as stated by Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local emergency official, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
The crash left 23 others injured, with 14 of them sustaining serious injuries. All the passengers on the bus were from Pakistan, with a total of 51 people on board at the time of the accident, which took place outside the city of Taft, approximately 500 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
Images broadcast by Iranian state television showed the bus overturned on the highway, with its roof crushed and doors wide open. Rescuers carefully navigated the broken glass and debris scattered across the road.
Malekzadeh attributed the crash to brake failure and driver inattention. However, media reports in Pakistan quoted Qamar Abbas, a local Shiite leader, stating that as many as 35 people had died in the crash. He mentioned that the passengers were from Larkana in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi expressed his condolences, saying, “We are deeply saddened by the loss of precious human lives in the bus accident in Iran.”
Iran is known for having one of the world’s worst traffic safety records, with around 17,000 fatalities annually.
The high death toll is often blamed on poor adherence to traffic laws, unsafe vehicles, and inadequate emergency services in the country’s vast rural regions.
The pilgrims had been on their way to Iraq to commemorate Arbaeen.
Arbaeen — Arabic for the number 40 — marks the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, at the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces in the Battle of Karbala, during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history.
Hussein was seen by his followers as the rightful heir of the prophet’s legacy. When he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate, he was killed in the battle, cementing the schism between Sunni and Shiite Islam.
Pilgrims gather in Karbala, Iraq, in what’s regarded as the largest annual public gathering in the world. The event draws tens of millions of people each year.
A separate bus crash early Wednesday in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province killed six people and injured 18, authorities said.