2 killed, 35 injured in horror accident City of Bulawayo firemen attend to an accident scene where a South Africa haulage truck was involved in a collision with a bus along the Victoria Falls-Bulawayo Road
City of Bulawayo firemen attend to an accident scene where a South Africa haulage truck was involved in a collision with a bus along the Victoria Falls-Bulawayo Road yesterday morning

City of Bulawayo firemen attend to an accident scene where a South Africa haulage truck was involved in a collision with a bus along the Victoria Falls-Bulawayo Road yesterday morning

Mpumelelo Nyoni, Loveness Bepete Chronicle Reporters
TWO people died on the spot while 35 others were injured, six of them seriously, when a bus they were travelling in collided head on with a haulage truck at the 20km peg along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway early yesterday morning.

The accident happened at about 4AM near the tollgate when the driver of the Zikhahlo bus, travelling from Lupane to Bulawayo, encroached into the lane of oncoming traffic and rammed into the truck which was going in the oppostite direction, after trying to avoid a Peugeot 504 that was parked on the road.

Bulawayo chief fire officer Richard Peterson confirmed the accident and said those who survived the accident were trapped in the bus for hours.

“The Zikhahlo bus was carrying 70 passengers from Gomoza Village heading to Bulawayo when it side-swiped a Peugeot 504 which was parked on the road. It collided head-on with a haulage truck. Thirty-five people were injured and had to be rushed to Mpilo Central Hospital and six of them are in critical condition,” said Peterson.

“We received a report at around 5AM and when we arrived at the scene, both drivers were dead but two passengers were still trapped alive so we had to use fire brigade rescue equipment to extricate them.”

Peterson said the team only managed to retrieve the trapped drivers’ bodies at around 8AM after separating the bus and the truck.

When Chronicle visited the scene at around 10AM, the driver of the Peugeot, Evious Masuku, said he was refuelling his car on the road when he saw the bus speeding towards Bulawayo.

“My car had run out of fuel so I was refuelling it near the edge of the road. My wife alerted me when she saw the speeding bus and I avoided it in the nick of time. It hit my car and I saw it ramming into the truck,” said Masuku.

He said he was coming from Lupane and headed for Bulawayo. He had to board a private car to buy fuel in Bulawayo to refuel.

Masuku said his wife first saw the bus as she was in front of their car and warned him of impending danger.

“Although I hadn’t parked my vehicle on the side of the road, I had put triangle reflectors to alert other vehicles. The problem is that that driver was speeding, even his conductors admitted it,” he said.

The latest accident comes two weeks after three people died on the spot after a Toyota Corolla they were travelling in rammed into a haulage truck along the Bulawayo-Harare Road.

Earlier this month, eight people, among them three infants, were killed when a Mercedes Benz they were travelling in was involved in a head on collision with a haulage truck at the 271km peg along the Bulawayo-Beitbridge Highway.

 

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