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Horror crash claims 13

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A HORROR crash involving a haulage truck and a commuter omnibus along the Bulawayo-Gwanda Road claimed 13 lives in the early hours of yesterday, police have said.

A HORROR crash involving a haulage truck and a commuter omnibus along the Bulawayo-Gwanda Road claimed 13 lives in the early hours of yesterday, police have said.

BY SHARON SIBINDI

A crane lifts the commuter omnibus wreckage
A crane lifts the commuter omnibus wreckage

Police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba said 13 had perished.

The commuter omnibus was carrying mourner’s en route to Masvingo for the burial of a child, according to Charamba. She said 13 people died on the spot while four others were seriously injured and were taken to United Bulawayo Hospital.

“The information we have is that 13 people died on the spot. The accident happened at the 8km peg along the Bulawayo-Gwanda Road. It involved a South African-registered haulage truck towing two trailers and a Toyota Hiace carrying 17 passengers and a dead body,” Charamba told NewsDay.

“The truck hit a pothole and the driver lost control of the vehicle and encroached onto the lane of the oncoming Hiace resulting in the accident. Names of the deceased will be announced in due course after notifying their next of kin.”

Bulawayo Fire Brigade chief fire officer Richard Peterson also confirmed the accident. He, however, gave a different figure of the death toll.

“We went there around midnight. We found the truck on top of a kombi. The driver is saying he hit a pothole and he lost control of the vehicle,” Peterson said.

“The truck driver seems to have lost control, which then resulted in his vehicle jack-knifing. The horse and the trailer were moving in opposite directions and, hence, the truck landed onto the commuter omnibus that was travelling from Bulawayo. At the moment we are not sure about the number of people killed because the figure we have now is 19.”

Peterson said the trailer, which was loaded with glasses, fell onto the commuter omnibus crashing the victims and killing 13 of them on the spot.

He said as from midnight to around 10am yesterday, the fire brigade was struggling to remove the trailer and its wreckage on the kombi at the same time removing the bodies.

He said one of the bodies removed from the wreckage had a missing arm.

Peterson said five people survived the crash and three of them had serious injuries.