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Bulgaria bus crash: At least 45 killed after vehicle catches fire on motorway

At least 45 people, including 12 children, died as a bus carrying mostly North Macedonian tourists crashed in flames on a highway in western Bulgaria hours before daybreak on Tuesday, officials said.

Bulgaria’s interior ministry said 45 people had died, making it the deadliest bus accident in the Balkan country’s history.

Interim interior minister Boyko Rashkov said bodies were “clustered inside and are burnt to ash”.

“The picture is terrifying, terrifying. I have never seen anything like that before,” he told reporters at the site.

The cause of the accident was unclear but the bus appeared to have hit a highway barrier either before or after it caught fire, Bulgarian officials said.

The accident happened on Struma highway about 30 km (19 miles) west of Sofia around 2am, they said.

The coach party had been returning to Skopje, capital of North Macedonia, after a weekend holiday trip to Istanbul, a journey of about 800 km (500 miles).

Bulgarian investigative service chief Borislav Sarafov said four buses from a North Macedonian travel agency had entered Bulgaria late on Monday from Turkey.

“Human error by the driver or a technical malfunction are the two initial versions for the accident,” Sarafov said.

AFP via Getty Images: Officials work at the site of the bus accident in which at least 45 people were killed

In front of the Ismail Qemali elementary school in Skopje, pupils cried after hearing news that five of their schoolmates, all from one family, had been killed.

“Ergin was my friend. He was a very good boy. Very nice. I am so sorry that they died,” Blerim Bushi, 11, told Reuters.

In Sofia, Adnan Yasharovski, 45, said his 16-year-old daughter Zuleikha called him to say she had survived the crash, and he had travelled to see her in hospital.

“She was crying. Her hands were burnt but otherwise fine,” he said outside the hospital. “She didn’t say much, she was crying and she was in shock. I only saw her through the door, as due to Covid, they did not let me into the room.”

Television footage showed the bus standing upright but charred and gutted by fire in the middle of the highway, which was wet from rain.

“This is a huge tragedy,” North Macedonian prime minister Zoran Zaev told reporters in Sofia and expressed his condolences to relatives of the victims.

Zaev said the passengers were all from North Macedonia but appeared to include a Serbian and a Belgian citizen. It was unclear whether the two were among the victims or injured.

The prime minister said he had spoken to one of the seven survivors, who told him the passengers were sleeping when they were woken by the sound of an explosion.

He said people sitting at the back of the bus were able to break a window and jump out.

Zaev said the passengers were from various communities in North Macedonia, a country of two million that borders Bulgaria and is home to an ethnic Albanian minority.

However, Albanian foreign minister Olta Xhacka said most of the passengers were from North Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian community.

“Great grief for the 45 lost lives of Albanians from Northern Macedonia during the tragic accident in Bulgaria,” he said on Twitter.

Additional reporting by agencies: Reference: Independent: Arpan Rai