Thirteen people were killed and eight others injured yesterday when a passenger bus collided with a truck in northwestern Algeria, emergency services said.
The crash happened at the Wed Hebaza site in Naama province, the Political Home Office said in a statement posted on its Facebook page. The bus was traveling between the cities of Sidi Bel Abes and Busemgun.Remaining Time-0:00FullscreenMute
A video broadcast by several media outlets shows the bus whose front part was completely destroyed, while the body of the overturned truck had fallen on the road. The eight injured were taken to a local hospital. The National Gendarmerie has launched an investigation to determine the cause of the accident, according to the official APS news agency.
President Abdelmajid Tebun expressed “his condolences to the families” of the victims and “his wishes to the injured for a speedy recovery.” “What a painful ordeal for Algeria to lose its children in fatal accidents, such as the one that happened to Wen Hebaza in Naama,” the Algerian president wrote on Twitter.
Algeria’s roads are considered one of the most dangerous in the region. The speed at which car drivers run, including drivers of public transport, is the leading cause of road accidents in the country, according to the government agency National Road Safety Commission.
In 2020, however, due to travel restrictions imposed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, road accidents were reduced by 13.16% compared to 2019, according to this government agency.
Algeria recorded almost 19,000 road accidents in 2020, which killed 2,844 people, compared to 22,507 accidents that killed 3,275 people in 2019. The number of road accidents recorded in 2020 was the lowest since 1970 and the lowest number of road deaths since 1975, according to the Commission.
