Tanzania bus and lorry collision kills at least 23

DAR ES SALAAM: At least 23 people have died after a bus crashed into a lorry in eastern Tanzania on Friday, the police said.

"The death toll is now 23" after one of those injured died, said police head of operations and training Liberatus Sabas.

A police chief in the eastern region of Morogoro, Fortunatus Muslim, said the accident occurred in Melela Kibaoni, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) west of the coastal city and economic hub Dar es Salaam.

"The truck driver, who was heading from the Dar es Salaam port to the Democratic Republic of Congo, was overtaking a motorbike when the two vehicles collided head-on," he said.

The bus was travelling in the other direction from the western city of Mbeya to the coastal city of Tanga, he added.

The presidency late Friday said 22 people had died and another 38 had been injured in the crash.

After the latest death, 37 remained injured on Saturday.

"Three injured have been transferred to Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam for further treatment," Sabas added.

President Samia Suluhu presented her condolences on Twitter, and urged "road users to adhere to traffic rules".

Tanzania has seen a spate of fatal traffic accidents.

On Monday, four people were killed in a coach accident outside the southwestern town of Tunduma, near the Zambian border, on its way to Dar es Salaam.

In May 2017, 35 people — 32 of them schoolchildren — were killed in a bus crash. The vehicle had been speeding.

Two years earlier, 42 people were killed in a collision between a coach and a lorry.

Still worse was a 2006 accident that saw a 26-seater bus carrying 74 passengers veer off the road near the northern town of Arusha and plunge off a bridge into the river, killing 54 people.

In February, traffic police chief Wilbroad Mutafungwa said 1,245 people had died in road accidents in the country in 2021.

In its 2018 global report on road safety, the World Health Organisation said Tanzania had reported 3,256 traffic accident deaths in 2016, but estimated there had probably been closer to 16,000.