Iran crash
[color=#8A2BE2][size=2][size=1][face=Verdana]At least 90 dead in Iran crash
09:49 AEST Sat Jun 26 2004
AFP - At least 90 people died in southeastern Iran when a fuel truck lost control and crashed into a bus at a police post, with the explosion engulfing other trucks, cars and buses, the Iranian Red Crescent said.
Officials said the toll could rise as high as 200 killed, as rescue workers scoured charred buses, cars and lorries in the gruesome task of collecting frazzled body parts.
"Ninety bodies have been recovered, but the death toll could rise further," a Red Crescent official in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, told Iranian media.
He said 114 injured had been evacuated from the scene of the accident, which occurred at a police post near Nosrat Abad some 110 kilometres west of Zahedan.
The flames engulfed six buses and five other trucks carrying tar or petrol, causing a massive inferno.
Another Red Crescent official, Alireza Ghadiani, put the death toll at 71. But he added that many bodies had literally melted into the ground due to the intense heat.
Provincial Governor Heydar Ali Nuraye said the horror of the accident meant it would take time to establish a definitive death toll.
The official IRNA news agency said most of the dead were women and children who had stayed in the passenger buses while their husbands were being searched by police.
State television showed footage of carbonised bodies lying amidst a scene of total destruction.
It said the tanker caught fire immediately after crashing, sending flames shooting out over a 50 metre radius.
It said the cause of the initial collision had yet to be determined, although one possibility was that the driver lost control of his truck on a steep road approaching the police post.
The driver "was not respecting the speed limit," provincial police commander Ahmad Najafi told the student news agency ISNA.
The truck reportedly hit an electricity pylon and then the police post, where the other vehicles were waiting.
An AFP correspondent who arrived at the scene said the vehicles had been moved off to the side of the road and that the area had been taken charged of by the military.
Roads around Zahedan are dotted with police checkpoints, mostly there to check for drugs. But there were questions raised as to why police had set up a roadblock between two tight bends and in a dip.
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