At least 71 people, including 17 children, have been killed in western Afghanistan after a bus carrying refugees deported from Iran burst into flames following a collision with a fuel truck.
The accident happened on Tuesday night when the passenger bus was passing through Guzara district in Herat province.
All the passengers on board the bus were Afghan nationals who were recently deported by Iran and were en route to the Afghan capital Kabul, the provincial governor’s spokesperson Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP.
Herat police said the accident was a result of the bus’s “excessive speed and negligence” and only three passengers survived the crash.
The bus crashed into a motorcycle and the truck – which was carrying fuel – leading to a fire. Two people who were in the truck and two others riding the motorcycle were also killed, police said.
Visuals from the scene showed a bus engulfed in flames as firefighters tried to douse the fire. Later pictures showed the burnt shell of the bus and the charred remains of the truck and the motorcycle.
A massive number of Afghan refugees have been deported by neighbouring countries Pakistan and Iran in recent years.
According to the United Nation’s migration agency, more than 1 million Afghans are expected to return to Afghanistan from these two countries alone. For decades, refugees from Afghanistan’s multiple conflicts have lived in border villages in neighbouring countries – more fled in 2021 after the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban.
The UN said more than 1.5 million returned in 2025 alone and more than 4 million since September 2023.
The UN’s mission in Afghanistan has called on all countries to stop forcibly sending vulnerable Afghan nationals back to their homeland under the Taliban regime as it warned about the threat of arrest, torture and abuse these citizens face.
Rights groups have voiced concern that their arrest and deportation would wreak havoc on their lives after their return to Afghanistan, which is facing challenges to integrate waves of returnees amid high rates of unemployment and poverty.
