17 Children Among 73 Afghan Migrants Killed in Fatal Bus Accident Near Iran Border

73 people, including 17 children, were killed after a bus full of Afghan migrants crashed into a truck and a motorcycle in Herat province, Ahmadullah Mottaqi, an official of the Taliban government said. The bus was heading toward Kabul and most of the migrants inside it had been deported from Iran, reports confirmed.

The official said that everyone on the bus had died, while two more individuals from other vehicles also lost their lives.

Recently, Tehran has increased its deportations of undocumented Afghan migrants who had fled their homeland due to conflicts and started living in Iran.

Passengers of the Bus Were Afghan Migrants

“All the passengers were migrants who had boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala,” provincial governor spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi was quoted as saying by the local media reports. Reports say Islam Qala is a town near the Afghanistan–Iran border.

Herat police said the accident happened because of the bus driver’s “excessive speed and negligence”, AFP reported.

Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, where roads have been damaged by decades of conflict and driving regulations are not strongly enforced.

Since the 1970s, millions of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan, with major waves during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

Tehran Has Ordered Hundreds of Thousands of Afghans to Leave Iran Citing ‘Security Concerns’

This has contributed to growing anti-Afghan sentiment in Iran, with refugees facing systemic discrimination.

Iran had previously given a July deadline for undocumented Afghans to depart voluntarily.

But since a brief war with Israel in June, Iranian authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, alleging national security concerns – though critics say Tehran may simply be looking for scapegoats for its security failures against Israeli attacks.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some had been in Iran for generations.

Experts warn Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the growing number of nationals forcibly returned to a country under Taliban rule. The country is already struggling with a large influx of returnees from Pakistan, which is also forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.

Also Read: 750,000 Return to Afghanistan from Iran Amid a Journey of Hardship