Turkey: Collision between tourist bus and school bus kills 1 & injures 47

At least one was killed and 47 others injured after a tourist bus collided with a minibus carrying schoolchildren on Turkey's Mugla Denizli highway on Monday. According to a report by the Russian state-owned news agency, Sputnik, the tourist bus drove into the oncoming lane and smashed into a minibus resulting in the killing of one person. According to the Cumhuriyet newspaper report, the tourist bus collided at 7.30 am and was overturned several times following the collision. The report said that the driver died on the spot.

Read the official tweet of Seydikemer Mayor, Yakup Otgoz:

The driver had a heart attack during the bus accident

According to the preliminary investigations, the driver suffered a heart attack. Among the victims were 41 Ukrainian tourists, seven school children and the driver of the school minibus, reported Sputnik. All of them were taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, Seydikemer Mayor, Yakup Otgoz, took to Twitter and shared the photograph of the incident. "I learned with great sadness that a driver lost his life and many of our fellow students were injured in a traffic accident on the Muğla-Denizli highway," tweeted the Mayor. "I wish God's mercy on our citizen who lost his life in the accident. I convey my best wishes to our students who were injured in the accident," he added.

The collision between a train & a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six

In another horrific incident, earlier on September 4, Saturday, a collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured seven others. The crash at a railroad crossing in Ergene, Tekirdag province, involved a minibus carrying textile factory workers returning from a night shift and a train headed to nearby Cerkezkoy at 8 am, the Turkish news agency Demiroren reported.

In another incident, in 2018, 25 people died when a passenger train derailed in nearby Corlu. That accident was blamed on heavy rains causing an embankment to collapse. Last year, Turkey’s Chamber of Mechanical Engineers said railway accidents in the country were three times the global average, while labour unions warned that cost-cutting has led to safety issues.

(With inputs from Associated Press)

(Image: Yakup Otgöz @YakupOtgoz/ Twitter)