At least 10 people died Saturday when a bus veered off the road and fell into a ravine in Iran’s western Lorestan province, according to state media reports.
Mohammad Ghadami, the provincial head of the Red Crescent Society, told state television that “aid and rescue teams have been dispatched to the area” to help handle the situation.
Located about 350 kilometers (220 miles) southwest of Tehran, Lorestan has witnessed its share of tragic road incidents. Iran is notorious for its poor road safety record, with more than 20,000 fatalities reported in traffic accidents from March 2023 to March 2024, as cited by local media referencing the Iranian judiciary’s Forensic Medicine Organization.
This incident comes after a tragic event in August when at least 28 Pakistani pilgrims traveling to Iraq for a religious ritual were killed in a bus crash in central Iran.
Historically, road accidents in Iran have been disastrous; the most important one was a disastrous collision in June 2004 that left over 70 people dead. This collision occurred when a gasoline tanker collided with a bus near a police station, with resulting flames engulfing six buses and five trucks within a radius of 50 meters.
