(Dan Tri) – At least 45 people, including young children, were killed in a bus fire in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia.
Scene of the bus accident that killed 45 people in Bulgaria on November 23Â (Photo: AFP).
According to AFP, the cause of the accident has not yet been determined, but officials believe a fire broke out on the bus before the vehicle crashed into the highway median.
The incident occurred at around 2:00 a.m. on November 23 (local time) on a highway about 40 km from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia.
`Among the victims, there were 12 people under the age of 18,` Bulgarian national police chief Stanimir Stanev said.
Mr. Stanev confirmed that 45 passengers out of 52 people on the bus died.
Nikolay Nikolov, head of the Department of Fire Safety and Civil Protection at the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, said there were `seven passengers who survived`.
The bus burned down after the fire (Photo: Reuters).
The bus met with an accident while traveling from the Turkish city of Istanbul to Skopje in North Macedonia.
`We don’t know if all the victims are from North Macedonia, but we assume so because the bus is registered in the country,` Mr. Zaev said in an interview with Nova TV.
However, police chief Stanev said only two drivers were Macedonian, while the passengers were Albanian.
`Initial information shows that there were 52 people on the bus, including 2 drivers of Macedonian nationality, and 50 passengers of Albanian nationality,` Mr. Stanev added.
A bus had an accident on a highway in Bulgaria (Photo: AFP).
Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev and Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov immediately went to the crash site this morning, while local media said the prime ministers of North Macedonia and Albania were also on their way to the scene.
`It was a terrible tragedy. I have never witnessed any such event before,` Mr. Rashkov told journalists at the scene of the accident.
`No one can say for sure how many people were there and who they were. The bodies were severely burned and had to be identified one by one,` Mr. Rashkov added.
Bus caught fire on highway, 45 people died in Bulgaria
Bulgaria has recorded tragic bus accidents.
According to official figures, a total of 628 people died in road accidents in Bulgaria in 2019 and 463 people died in 2020 in the country of 6.9 million people.
Bulgaria currently has one of the highest daily death rates from Covid-19 in the European Union (EU), with the majority of deaths concentrated in unvaccinated people.