25 killed in road crash in Tanzania: president
A road crash in northern Tanzania has killed at least 25 people including several foreigners, President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on Sunday.
The accident occurred on Saturday evening when a truck driver lost control of his vehicle on the road linking Arusha and Namanga and collided with three other vehicles, she said in a statement.
The victims included one girl, 10 women and 14 men. Among them were an American, a Kenyan, a South African and a Kenyan national.
At least 21 people were injured in the accident, including people from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Switzerland, Britain and Mali, the statement said.
One of the vehicles was transporting foreigners who were volunteering at a school in Arusha, it said.
Photos circulated by Tanzanian media showed a yellow "New Vision" school vehicle completely smashed under the force of the impact.
Tanzania is regularly plunged into mourning by fatal road accidents, with collisions killing scores in 2015, 2017 and 2022.
One of the bloodiest accidents occurred in 2006, when a bus plunged off a bridge into a river, killing 54 people.
In a 2018 report on road safety, the World Health Organisation (WHO) noted that official Tanzanian statistics for 2016 recorded 3,256 road deaths, but estimated that the figure was between 13,000 and 19,000.
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