Seven dead in Basra bus crash after tire bursts on vehicle carrying pilgrims

BASRA — Seven people were killed and 43 injured Tuesday when a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims overturned between the Rumaila area and the Al-Sidra checkpoint, according to Aqeel Talib Al-Furaiji, chairman of the Basra Governorate Security Committee.

Al-Furaiji said at the scene that the crash occurred when one of the bus’s tires burst, causing the driver to lose control. “The bus was crowded with passengers, with about 43 people injured and seven or eight deaths recorded so far,” he said.

He added that police, civil defense and traffic authorities “mobilized their efforts to evacuate the victims and close the road to facilitate rescue operations before reopening it after cleaning the accident site and transferring all the injured and deceased to the hospital for treatment and completing procedures.”

Basra’s health department said its emergency units were placed on high alert. “The Basra Health Department mobilized its staff in the emergency departments to receive the injured from the traffic accident that occurred between Rumaila and the Al-Sidra checkpoint, which resulted in 40 injuries to Arbaeen pilgrims and a number of deaths in an initial count,” it said in a statement.

The Iranian visitors were on their way to Karbala for the annual Arbaeen pilgrimage, a major Shiite observance marking the end of the 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. Millions of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and beyond make the journey each year, many of them on foot.

On Friday, two Iraqi men were killed and 24 Iranian visitors injured when a bus collided with a truck on the Al-Numaniyah–Karbala Road in western Wasit governorate, local officials said.