AT least 76 people are dead including 17 children after a horrific crash between a passenger bus, a truck and a motorbike.

The bus burst into flames after colliding with the smaller vehicles in Afghanistan’s western Herat province on Tuesday night.

Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat provincial government, stated: “Seventy-six citizens of the country […] lost their lives in the incident, and three others were seriously injured.”

He added: “All the passengers were migrants who had boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala,” a town near the Iranian border.

Police in the Guzara district, outside Herat city, said the truck had been carrying fuel – which caused the catastrophic fire.

Provincial government spokesman Ahmadullah Muttaqi confirmed the bus was carrying refugees back from Iran after they were deported.

Everyone on board the bus was killed, as well as two people from the other vehicles, he said.

An army statement said that the dead had been taken to a military hospital.

Many of the bodies were “unidentifiable”, said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, chief physician of Al-Farooq Army Corps Hospital.

Herat police said the accident happened because of the bus driver’s “excessive speed and negligence”, AFP reported.

At least 1.5 million Afghans have been turfed out of Iran and Pakistan since the start of this year, according to the UN migration agency.

The neighbouring countries have hosted migrants for decades but this year have begun expelling them en masse.

The accident struck a day after Iran announced a further 800,000 people would have to leave the country by next March.

Tuesday’s crash was one of the country’s deadliest in recent years, the state-run Bakhtar News Agency reported.

Traffic accidents frequently occur in Afghanistan, largely due to inadequate roads resulting from decades of conflict, reckless driving on highways, and insufficient regulation.

In December last year, two bus accidents involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52.

In March 2024, over 20 people perished and 38 were injured when a bus collided with a fuel tanker and ignited in the southern Helmand province.

Another significant accident involving a fuel tanker occurred in December 2022, when the vehicle overturned and caught fire in Afghanistan’s high-altitude Salang Pass, resulting in the deaths of 31 people.