DAMASCUS: A minimum of 35 individuals have been killed on Saturday (Jul 25) when two passenger buses collided on a desert freeway in central-eastern Syria, state media said.
State information company SANA, citing a well being ministry official, stated 30 others have been injured within the collision on the Damascus-Deir Ezzor highway.
The inside ministry stated the crash concerned a bus carrying inside safety forces personnel and a civilian bus, with out specifying what number of casualties got here from its ranks.
State tv broadcast footage displaying a bus on fireplace and particles scattered throughout the freeway. Navy helicopters have been deployed to airlift casualties from the scene.
Emergency and catastrophe administration minister Raed Al Saleh referred to as it one of many deadliest highway accidents in Syria in recent times by variety of victims.
He stated the crash “locations a shared nationwide duty on all of us to work to stop such painful incidents from recurring”, in response to SANA.
Al Saleh added that it underscored the necessity to deal with Syria’s highway infrastructure, which he stated was burdened by years of neglect and conflict harm.
Earlier this month, 5 individuals have been killed and dozens injured, most of them Lebanese, when a bus carrying pilgrims coming back from Saudi Arabia overturned in southern Syria’s Daraa province.
Years of civil conflict have left a lot of Syria’s highway community in poor situation. The director of highway transport in Damascus, Moaz Najjar, was quoted by state tv as saying authorities had ordered highway upkeep within the jap area be handled as a precedence.
Najjar stated most roads had not undergone upkeep in 15 years.
Final 12 months, a minimum of 12 individuals have been killed when a bus collided with an oil tanker in northeastern Syria. In 2020, a minimum of 32 individuals died when a gasoline tanker crashed into two buses on a highway between Damascus and Homs province.
