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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran truck accident kills 30 Afghans |
| 2008-08-22 |
| TEHRAN - At least 30 Afghans were killed and 83 injured when a truck overturned in southern Iran on Thursday, the official news agency IRNA reported. Local medical official Mohammad Ali Ghanaat Pisheh told the news agency that the casualties were among a total of 125 Afghan illegal immigrants travelling in the 10-wheeler. The cause of the early morning accident in the village of Khiareh in Fars province was still under investigation, he added. According to state radio, two trucks were travelling together carrying Afghan nationals, but only one of them was involved in the accident. The Afghan nationals had illegally crossed Iran's southeastern borders to make a living mainly by working on construction sites. Each of the Afghans had paid 5,000,000 rials (520 dollars) to human traffickers to transport them from Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan to the southern city of Shiraz, the report said. "This matter should be examined that how two trucks carrying humans have made it from Sistan-Baluchestan to Fars province," the head of political department of the Shiraz governor office, Vahid Rajaie, was quoted as saying. Shiraz is the capital of the southern province of Fars. Officially, there are around 900,000 legal Afghan refugees in Iran but the number of illegal Afghans could be twice that number, according to unofficial estimates. Iran's roads are among the most dangerous in the world. At least 100,000 people have been killed in traffic accidents over the past five years in a country of some 70 million people. |
| Posted by:Steve White |