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TEHRAN (Iran): Up to 200
people were feared dead after a tanker truck caught fire
following a collision outside the southeastern city of Zahedan,
Iranian state television said, quoting a Red Crescent
official.
The flames engulfed six buses and five other trucks, two of
which were carrying tar, causing a massive conflagration, the
television said.
Red Crescent Report
The Red Crescent initially put the death toll at between 50
and 200, the television said. It had earlier reported more
than 70 dead and 84 injured.
Heidar Ali-Nouraei, the governor general of Zahedan, was
quoted as saying the tanker truck collided with another
tanker, six buses, a building and a light post.
In-depth
A gasoline truck exploded after smashing into a bus in
southeast Iran late on Thursday, killing several people and
injuring more than 100, officials say.
"The disaster is so grave we cannot identify faces and cannot
differentiate between corpses," Haidar Ali Nourai, governor of
the southeastern city of Zahedan, told state television on
Friday.
The Reason
He said the accident happened when the truck lost control and
ploughed into a bus waiting at Nosratabad police checkpoint.
The fireball then enveloped five other buses.
Television showed bodies charred beyond recognition. A gold
watch was seen stuck to an arm scorched to the bone.
Spokesman Mehran Nourbakhsh said 90 people had died in the
blast and 114 had been injured. The aid group has sent 40
workers to the scene.
A Sharp Bend
Zahedan parliamentarian Hossein Ali Shahriari said the
checkpoint was badly positioned on a sharp bend.
"Inspections at this checkpoint use stone-age methods," he
told the ISNA student new agency. "We always see lots of buses
and cars caught in queues at this road block."
Iran has one of the highest road accident rates in the world,
averaging five deaths every two hours.
Nosratabad lies on the road from Zahedan to Bam, which was hit
by an earthquake last year that killed more than 20,000
people.
The Locale
Zahedan is about 30 km (20 miles) from the Pakistan border as
the crow flies.
The road is dotted with checkpoints because it is the main
route for drugs smugglers taking opiates from Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the West.
Backdrop
Around 300 people were killed and 450 injured in February last
when a train laden with gasoline and fertiliser exploded in
the northeast of the country after derailing.
The force of the blast near Nishapur razed village homes to
the ground, crushing people under crumbled mud brick walls.
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