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Kenya bus carrying funeral mourners hits truck on Nairobi-Mombasa highway, killing at least 22
The crash on Sunday came three weeks after 17 people died on the same road, and officials warned the toll could rise.
Key points
- At least 22 people were killed when a bus collided with a truck on Sunday, police said.
- The passengers were reported to be returning from a funeral.
- Three weeks ago, 17 people died in another crash on the same highway.
At least 22 people were killed on Sunday when a bus collided with a truck on the highway linking Nairobi with the port city of Mombasa, Kenya’s main road artery, police said.
Several others were injured and are being treated in hospital. The passengers were reported to have been returning from a funeral when the crash happened.
Abdullahi Khalif, the commissioner of Makueni County, through which a long stretch of the highway runs, warned that the death toll could rise. Police did not give the cause of the collision, and no victims have been named.
Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority said the section of road where the crash took place is designated an “accident black spot”, and that recommendations had already been made to deal with the safety problems there.
The crash came three weeks after another on the same highway killed 17 people.
Speeding and poor road conditions have often been blamed for crashes on Kenyan roads, though officials have not said whether either played a part on Sunday.
The accident adds to a difficult few weeks for Kenya, where authorities are also handling an Ebola outbreak and the collapse of a 16-storey building in Nairobi.