At least seven people have died and eleven others have been injured after a passenger bus rammed into a stationary articulated lorry in southeastern Turkey, local authorities have confirmed. The fatal crash happened about 90 kilometres west of Gaziantep when the intercity coach drove into the back of the truck, which had reportedly pulled over due to a tyre blowout.
Footage from the scene showed the front section of the bus severely crushed, with the right side almost completely torn apart from the force of the impact. Officials from the Gaziantep governor’s office said all the victims, both those who died and those who survived with injuries, were passengers on the bus. Efforts to identify the casualties are still underway.
Emergency teams quickly responded to the highway, sealing off the area as paramedics attended to the wounded. Police took the lorry driver into custody as part of the ongoing investigation. Images from the crash site showed a mangled bus wedged beneath the rear of the container truck, highlighting the intensity of the collision.
Sunday’s tragedy adds to a growing list of deadly bus accidents in Turkey and across the region. In a similar incident last year, ten people were killed and thirty-nine injured when a coach skidded during heavy rain and slammed into several vehicles on a busy motorway, causing a large pile-up.
Turkey is not alone in facing such transport disasters. In India, a series of fatal crashes have also raised concern. In Uttarakhand’s Tehri district, five tourists died when a bus carrying nearly thirty passengers rolled off the road and plunged more than two hundred feet into a gorge along the Kunjapuri–Hindolakhal route, prompting a major rescue operation by the State Disaster Response Force. And only last month, at least twenty-five people were killed in Andhra Pradesh when a speeding bus struck a motorbike and burst into flames, trapping sleeping passengers inside.
Authorities in Turkey say investigations into the latest crash are ongoing as they work to determine what led to the deadly impact and whether any additional factors contributed to the tragedy.