Tragedy on Struma motorway: A bus caught fire leaving 45 dead

A passenger bus with Macedonian registration caught fire while travelling on “Struma” motorway near the village of Bosnek, Western Bulgaria.. Investigators confirmed 45 dead, including 12 children.

According to initial data, 4 buses of a tourist company from the Republic of North Macedonia on November 23 entered Bulgaria through the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint. They traveled from Istanbul to Skopje.

Shortly before the tragic accident, the buses stopped to rest at a petrol station.

The bus was carrying 52 passengers, 12 of them children.

Only 7 people have survived in good condition without risk to life. They have been taken to Pirogov emergency hospital in Sofia. The youngest patient is 17 years old.

The bodies were burned beyond recognition, which will make it difficult to identify them. It is not yet known whether there were any transfers of passengers between the buses during the break.

The accident occurred around 3.00 on November 23. A 112 call for a burning bus was made after 2am last night.

Police and fire-fighting teams arrived on the scene.

Borislav Sarafov, director of the National Investigation Service, said the scale of the accident was huge.

Caretaker Minister of Interior, Boyko Rashkov, said he had never seen such a thing before.

The picture is horrifying. Not everyone can stand it. The people from the bus were crowded in one place, burnt beyyond recognition.

"A tragedy that shook us and demanded that the Bulgarian state react very quickly and make it possible to first investigate this road accident," said Stefan Yanev, Bulgaria's caretaker Prime Minister.

The identities of the victims will be established by DNA analysis after doctors and biologists take material from each body.

"We cannot say exactly who died at the moment, as Rashkov said, the bodies were burned beyond recognition," said Borislav Sarafov, director of the National Investigation Service.

At this stage, the investigation is working on two versions.
"One is a human error of the bus driver, the second is a sudden technical malfunction, which led to the accident, respectively to the fatal outcome of the passengers," Sarafov said.

The Road Infrastructure Agency announced that the traffic on “Struma” motorway in the section from the road junction "Daskalovo" to the road junction "Dolna Dikanya" is limited in both directions.

7 injured were admitted to "Pirogov" emergency hospital. Six have burns to the face and upper respiratory tract. Two have burns on their hands, the others have lacerations. One of the seven injured had a fractured thigh and was admitted in traumatology. The youngest is 17 years old. They are lucid, but are in a serious mental state.

Currently, “Struma” Motorway is closed to traffic. Traffic is redirected to Radomir.