35 Killed In Syria Bus Collision

The death toll in a crash on Saturday between two passenger buses in a central-eastern desert region of Syria has risen to 35, state media said.

News agency SANA, quoting a health ministry official, also said 30 others were injured in the “collision between two passenger buses on the Damascus-Deir Ezzor road”.

The interior ministry said the crash was between “a bus carrying a number of internal security forces personnel and a civilian bus”, without specifying how many of the casualties were from its forces.

State media broadcast footage of the crash, including images of a bus on fire and with debris strewn along the highway.

Earlier this month, five people were killed and dozens of others injured, most of them Lebanese, when a bus carrying pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia overturned on a highway in southern Syria’s Daraa province.

Provincial authorities had suggested speeding may have been the cause of that crash.

Last year, at least 12 people were killed and several others injured when a bus collided with an oil tanker in northeastern Syria.