A bus carrying tourists from North Macedonia crashes in Bulgaria, killing 45 people.

A bus carrying tourists from North Macedonia crashes in Bulgaria, killing 45 people.

Authorities say a bus bringing people back to North Macedonia from a tourism excursion to Istanbul crashed and caught fire early Tuesday in western Bulgaria, killing at least 45 people.

Seven persons were brought to hospitals to receive medical attention. Around 2 a.m., the accident occurred.

Lubomir Jovevski, the head prosecutor of North Macedonia, revealed that 12 children were confirmed among the dead after visiting the accident site.

Although the reason for the accident was not immediately determined, it appeared that the bus collided with a highway guard rail crashed and caught fire.

The bus was one of four in a group of four. An investigation will be done, according to officials.

The bus was engulfed in flames and plumes of thick, black smoke rose from the scene in photos taken shortly after the incident.

The burned-out bus, its windows all broken, scorched, and gutted, sat upright against the median barrier in the daylight.

At the crash site, Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov told reporters that he had “never in my life seen anything more horrific.”

“The image is terrifying; the passengers on the bus have been reduced to charcoal,” Rashkov remarked. “It’s difficult to say how many there were.”

There were four buses traveling together, and people may have switched buses throughout the pauses.”

Police were stationed outside the Skopje headquarters of a travel business thought to have organized the trip to Turkey, according to media in North Macedonia, a country of around 2 million people.

Bulgarian Caretaker Prime Minister Stefan Yanev, who also visited the crash site, described it as “a great tragedy” to the media.

“I’d want to take this occasion to express my condolences to the victims’ families,” Yanev stated. “Let us hope that we can learn from this unfortunate episode and avoid such incidents in the future.”

Almost all of those killed in the crash were ethnic Albanians, according to Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka.

The prime minister of North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, told Bulgarian television station bTV that he had spoken to one of the bus survivors.

“One of the passengers informed me he was sleeping and awoke from an explosion,” Zaev told bTV, adding that the authorities will gather information “essential for the relatives of the deceased and survivors.”

Later, Zaev traveled to Bulgaria to personally meet the survivors in the hospital.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen offered her sympathies to the families and friends of those killed in the “bus tragedy,” saying that “Europe stands in solidarity with you in these sad times.”

According to European Commission data, Bulgaria, a 7-million-strong EU member, had the second-highest road death rate in the 27-nation union in 2019, with 89 people killed per million populations.

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