Almost a hundred killed in road accident in Iran

At least 90 people were killed late on Thursday night in a massive explosion near Iran's border with Afghanistan after a petrol tanker crashed into the Nosrat Abad checkpoint, 60 miles west of Zahedan, reports independent.co.uk.

"The disaster is so grave we cannot identify faces and cannot differentiate between corpses," Mr Haidar Ali Nourai, governor of the city of Zahedan, where the accident occured on Thursday, told state television yesterday.

According to straitstimes.asia1.com, Mr Nourai said the accident happened when the truck was unable to stop and ploughed into a bus waiting at Nosratabad police checkpoint.

Mr Nourai said the accident happened when the truck was unable to stop and ploughed into a bus waiting at Nosratabad police checkpoint.

Reuters.com cites Zahedan parliamentarian Hossein Ali Shahriari who said that the checkpoint was badly positioned on a sharp bend. "Inspections at this checkpoint use stone-age methods," he told the ISNA student's news agency. "We always see lots of buses and cars caught in queues at this road block."

Iran has one of the highest road accident rates in the world, averaging five deaths every two hours.