A bus carrying 51 Pakistani Shiite pilgrims to Iraq crashed in Yazd province on Tuesday night, killing at least 28 people and injuring 23, 14 of whom are in serious condition.
ADVERTISEMENTAt least 28 people were killed when a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq crashed in central Iran, an official said Wednesday.
The crash happened on Tuesday night in the central Iranian province of Yazd, said Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local emergency official.
Another 23 people suffered injuries in the crash, 14 of them serious, he added.
At the time of the crash, there were 51 people on board, all of whom were from Pakistan.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi expressed his condolences over the deaths. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of precious human lives in the bus accident in Iran,” he said.
Iranian state television later broadcast images of the bus turned upside down on the highway with its roof smashed in and all its doors open.
Rescuers carefully made their way through the road, avoiding the broken glass and debris scattered around.
The pilgrims had been on their way to Iraq to commemorate Arbaeen — Arabic for the number 40 — which marks the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history.
Pilgrims gather in Karbala, Iraq, in what’s regarded as the largest annual public gathering in the world.
The event draws tens of millions of people each year. Already, Iranian police said 3 million pilgrims had left the country's borders for Karbala.
The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
A separate bus crash early Wednesday in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province killed six people and injured 18, authorities said.