Kabul, Aug. 21: At least 73 people, including 17 children, were killed in a bus fire in western Afghanistan, sources said. Most of them were Afghan migrants deported from Iran, sources said.
The bus caught fire after colliding with a truck and a motorcycle in Herat province on its way to Kabul last night, said Ahdullah Mottaki, the Taliban's information and culture director in Herat. He said all those on board the bus were killed, along with two other people in the other vehicle.
Herat police reported that the accident was caused by excessive speed and negligence by the bus driver. Since the 1970s, millions of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan, with large numbers going to the neighboring country during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
This has contributed to growing anti-Afghan sentiment in Iran, where refugees face systematic discrimination. Iran had previously given a deadline in July for undocumented Afghans to leave voluntarily. But after a brief war with Israel in June, Iranian authorities have forcibly returned millions of Afghans, citing national security concerns. More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, the UN refugee agency said, some of whom had been in Iran for generations.