Tourist bus crashes in Bulgaria, 45 dead
FROM N. MACEDONIA
SOFIA/SKOPJE • A bus carrying tourists from North Macedonia crashed in flames on a highway in western Bulgaria before daybreak on Tuesday, killing at least 45 people, including 12 children, Bulgarian officials said.
The cause of the accident was unclear but the bus appeared to have hit a highway barrier either before or after it caught fire, authorities said.
Seven people who leapt from the burning bus were rushed to the Pirogov emergency hospital in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and were in a stable condition, hospital staff said. They had burns and one had a leg injury.
Bulgaria’s interior ministry said 45 people had died, making it the deadliest bus accident in the Balkan country’s history.
Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov said bodies were “clustered inside and are burnt to ash.”
“The picture is terrifying, terrifying. I have never seen anything like that before,” he told reporters at the site. The accident happened on the Struma highway about 30 km west of Sofia around 2 a.m.
The coach party had been returning to Skopje, capital of North Macedonia, after a weekend holiday trip to Istanbul in Turkey, a trip of about 800 km. A passenger list released by media in Skopje carried 51 names suggesting most victims were from North Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority.
Bulgarian investigative service chief Borislav Sarafov said four buses from a North Macedonian travel agency had entered Bulgaria late on Monday from Turkey.
“Human error by the driver or a technical malfunction are the two initial versions for the accident,” Sarafov told reporters. “There was a blast. The question is whether this blast was caused from a blast in the bus, or was caused by the collision of the bus in the road barrier.”
Officials said they would look at the condition of the highway, where accidents have often been reported.
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said one of the seven survivors had told him the passengers were sleeping when they were woken by the sound of an explosion.
“This is a huge tragedy,” he told reporters in Sofia.
He said people at the back of the bus were able to break a window and jump out.
Chamuran Feizulovski, 35, a relative of one of the injured, told Reuters another of the survivors said he had first felt the bus hit an obstacle and then a blast.
In front of the Ismail Qemali elementary school in Skopje, pupils cried after hearing news that five of their schoolmates, all from one family, had been killed.
“Ergin was my friend. He was a very good boy. Very nice. I am so sorry that they died,” Blerim Bushi, 11, told Reuters.
Zaev said the passengers were all from North Macedonia but appeared to include a Serbian citizen and a Belgian citizen.