56 killed, 30 seriously injured in Eritrea’s worst-ever road accident
ASMARA, July 12 (AFP) — At least 56 people were killed and 30 seriously injured in Eritrea’s worst-ever road accident when an overloaded bus plunged over an embankment southwest of Asmara, officials said Tuesday.
The bus was travelling between the towns of Adi Quala and Maimene in southern Eritrea on Sunday when the driver swerved to avoid rocks on a wet road and slid down a 100-meter (330-foot) ravine, they said.
The passengers were all Eritreans and the injured were being treated at hospitals in the towns of Adi Quala and Mendefera, which are along Eritrea’s southern border with Ethiopia, the state news agency ERINA reported late Monday.
“The accident took place on Sunday but it had rained on Saturday,” said Yewoldemichael Gebretensae, head of infrastructure of the Debub region, where the accident took place about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital.
“The ground was still wet and there had been a landslide of rocks,” he told AFP in Asmara by phone from Mendefera, Debub’s regional capital. “The driver saw a big stone on the road and to avoid it, went to close to the edge.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said the accident was the worst since the Horn of Africa country won independence from Ethiopia 12 years ago and said the government had to do more to improve road safety.
“It is the biggest accident in the history of Eritrea, since 1993,” he told AFP. “The bus was supposed to take 45 people but had 86 people.
“There are many accidents in Eritrea. We have to work hard on this,” Ali Abdu said, adding that in 2004 an average of one person was killed and six injured a day in road accidents in the country.
“We have a weakness, which is a lack of control from the government institutions. Mainly the blame goes to the government institutions. There is no follow-up,” he said.
Eritrea, which has a population of 3.5 million people, has many mountain roads with sharp bends. A major government road safety campaign, launched in 2004, “hasn’t gone as well as we would have liked it to,” Ali Abdu said.