Saturday, April 5, 2008

Students and Teachers Die on the Road

High Number of Road Accidents in Iran

A bus carrying teachers from Shahr-e Kord to Ahwaz was overturned in an accident which ‎claimed the lives of twenty-seven people. This is the second accident in the past two weeks ‎affecting large numbers of travelers. Previously, on March 15, a bus carrying university students ‎from Mashhad's Khayyam University collided with a vehicle transporting fuel on the ‎Andimeshk-Khoramabad road. The bus caught on fire and twenty-four students were burnt to ‎death. ‎

Prior to these two accidents, similar accidents claimed the lives of students and teachers in the ‎past year. Last fall, in a collision between two busses carrying 80 university students from ‎Damghan, seven students were killed and more than 29 were injured. Similarly, last spring, a ‎truck collided with a bus carrying 37 geology students from Mashhad's Payam-e Nour ‎University. The students were returning from an educational tour in Sari. That accident claimed ‎the lives of 5 students and injured 15 others. ‎

The head of Iran's Transportation and Safety Department (Sazman-e Rahnamayee va Ranandegi-‎e Iran), Colonel Rooyanian, believes that road accidents have decreased in Iran by 16 percent. ‎However, the colonel's own deputy announced that 420 people have lost their lives only in the ‎first six days of the Persian new year. ‎

According to official figures, more than thirty thousand people die in road accidents in Iran every ‎year.

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