Two buses crashed in Kaffrine in central Senegal, killing at least 40 passengers and injuring 87. The incident occurred at 3:15 a.m. (03:15 GMT) on Sunday on National Highway 1. Forty people were murdered in the “grave” tragedy, according to President Macky Sall, who has declared three days of national mourning.
The fire department reported that the bus, which had a capacity of sixty passengers, was travelling to Rosso, which is located close to the Mauritania border. Colonel Cheikh Fall, commander of operations for the National Fire Brigade, told the AFP news agency that “it was a terrible disaster” and that 87 people had been hurt. He stated that victims were sent to a medical facility and hospital in Kaffrine. Normal traffic has resumed, and Fall reports that the scene has been cleaned of debris and destroyed buses. Public prosecutor Cheikh Dieng has stated that preliminary investigations point to “a bus assigned to the public transport of passengers, following the bursting of a tyre, leaving its trajectory before colliding head-on with another bus coming in the opposite direction” as the likely cause of the accident. President Sall tweeted, “I am extremely pained by the fatal road tragedy.” To the relatives of the deceased, I offer my deepest sympathies, and to the injured, I pray for a full and swift recovery.
In a country where road accidents are prevalent due to a lack of driver discipline, inadequate roads, and outdated automobiles, this is one of the worst single-incident mortality counts in recent years. A bus and a refrigerated lorry crashed in western Senegal in October 2020, killing at least 16 persons and injuring another 15. Reports at the time said that the truck was transporting fish to Dakar.
