Afghan bus crash death toll rises to 78

The death toll from a collision between a bus carrying Afghan migrants returning from Iran and two other vehicles in western Afghanistan has risen to 78, provincial officials said on Wednesday.

Seventy-six people died in the accident in Herat province's Guzara district on Tuesday night when the passenger bus hit a motorcycle and a truck transporting fuel, causing an explosive fire, officials and eyewitnesses said.

Two of the three survivors later died of their injuries, officials said on Wednesday.

"Two injured individuals from last night's incident succumbed to severe injuries, increasing the number of victims to 78," a statement by the provincial information department said, citing representatives of the military hospital that received victims.

Seventeen children were among those killed, according to army spokesman Mujeebullah Ansar, though a provincial police source put the number at 19.

Many of the bodies were "unidentifiable", said Mohammad Janan Moqadas, chief physician at the military hospital.

"There was a lot of fire... There was a lot of screaming, but we couldn't even get within 50 metres (160 feet) to rescue anyone," 34-year-old eyewitness Akbar Tawakoli told AFP. "Only three people were saved from the bus. They were also on fire and their clothes were burnt."

Clean-up teams worked to remove the torched shell of the bus and twisted wreckage of another vehicle on the roadside early on Wednesday, an AFP journalist saw. "I was very saddened that most of the passengers on the bus were children and women," another eyewitness, 25-year-old Abdullah, who like many Afghans only uses one last name, told AFP.

The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital Kabul, Herat provincial government spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP.