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DAR ES SALAAM, March 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least 22 people have been killed after a bus crashed into a truck in eastern Tanzania, the presidency said.
The accident also injured 38 people, the presidency said in a statement.
The police chief of the eastern region of Morogoro, Fortunatus Muslim, said the Friday accident occurred in Melela Kibaoni, some 200km west of the coastal city and economic hub Dar-es-Salaam.
He said the truck left its lane to overtake a motorbike.
“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 traveling in the other direction – from the western city of Mbeya to the coastal city of Tanga, he added.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan 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 truck.
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. — NNN-AGENCIES
