Forty-six people, including a dozen minors, were killed yesterday after a bus caught fire south of the Bulgarian capital, officials said, in the nation’s deadliest road accident in years.
A cause has yet to be determined, but officials believe a fire broke out on board the tourist bus, which was traveling from Istanbul, Turkey, to Skopje, North Macedonia. It then crashed into guardrails.
There were no other vehicles involved in the accident, which occurred at about 2am on a highway about 40km from Sofia, near the village of Bosnek.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Seven people survived.
“Unfortunately, there are many victims, 46, including 12 minors,” North Macedonian Minister of Health Venko Filipce told public BNT television after visiting survivors in a Sofia hospital.
The seven survivors — a woman, a 16-year-old girl, and five men — are all from the same family, he said.
Among the dead were victims of several nationalities, including a Belgian.
Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev said an investigation into the accident had been launched, dismissing the suggestion that road conditions were to blame.
Images showed the carcass of the totally burnt-out bus after it broke through the guardrails between the two sides of the highway.
Local media in Macedonia report that the bus was registered to the “Besa trans” tourist agency, which organizes touristic and shopping tours to Istanbul.
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told state news agency MIA that he had spoken to one survivor.
“He explained that they were sleeping in the bus when an explosion was heard. They succeeded to break one of the windows and save a few people. Unfortunately, the rest did not succeed,” he said.
“It is a great tragedy ... 12 [victims] are under 18 years old, and the rest are young people about 20 to 30 years old,” he added.
Bulgarian national police chief Stanimir Stanev said that while the two drivers of the bus were Macedonian, the passengers were Albanian, according to initial information.
Stanev said the bus driver died “immediately so there was no one able to open the doors.”
Survivors “jumped out of the windows,” said Maya Arguirova, head of the treatment center for severe burns where they were transported.
All survivors were in stable condition.
Bulgarian Minister of the Interior Boyko Rashkov was among those who rushed to the site of the crash early yesterday.
“It’s a terrifying scene. I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Rashkov told journalists at the site.
“Nobody can say for certain how many are there and who they were. The bodies are badly burned and have to be identified one by one,” he added.
Bulgaria has a history of deadly bus accidents. Twenty Bulgarians died in 2018, when their bus skidded on a wet road and overturned.
A total of 628 people died in road accidents in 2019 and 463 last year in the country of 6.9 million people, official data showed.
Yesterday’s accident occurred on a section of highway with steep gradients and without clear demarcation lines, where many accidents have taken place, said Diana Roussinova of a road safety non-governmental organization, which has complained to authorities about the stretch in the past.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS