Kabul: A bus plunged off a mountain road in
Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains on Wednesday, catching fire and
leaving as many as 35 people dead, though authorities were
still pulling burned bodies from the wreckage.
Dr Sanim Rasouli, health director in Baghlan province,
says the bus picked up speed, struck other vehicles and then
plunged off a road near the Salang Pass, a major route through
the mountains about 115 kilometres north of the capital,
Kabul.
"The bus failed to brake and hit several other small
vehicles on its way down a hill," Rasouli said, adding that
the brakes might not have been working.
He said dozens of people, some of them children, burned
to death when the bus caught fire.
The Afghan Interior Ministry reported that up to 35
people were killed in the accident just north of the
3,800-meter high Salang Pass, the site of an avalanche earlier
this year that killed more than 170 people.
In southern Afghanistan, would-be suicide attackers
targeted the offices of a charity this morning but were killed
by security guards before they could detonate their
explosives-laden vests, an official said.
One foreign employee was wounded in the attack on the
office of International Relief and Development in the town of
Lashkar Gah, said Dawood Ahmadi, spokesman for the government
in Helmand province.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 18:30