At least nine people were killed on Monday when a bus collided with a fuel truck in Iran’s southeast, state media reported, the second mass casualty road accident within days.

Mohammad Mehdi Sajjadi, head of the Red Crescent Society in Sistan-Baluchestan province, told the official IRNA news agency that “nine people lost their lives and 13 others were injured in the accident in which a bus collided with a fuel truck near Zahedan”.

On Saturday, 10 people were killed when a bus plunged into a ravine in Iran’s western Lorestan province.

Iran has a poor road safety record, with more than 20,000 deaths in accidents recorded between March 2023 and March 2024, according to figures from the judiciary’s Forensic Medicine Organisation cited by local media.

In August, 28 pilgrims en route to Iraq were killed when their bus crashed in central Iran.

Impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, saw one of Iran’s deadliest accidents in 2004, when a gasoline tanker collided with a bus, sparking a massive fire that killed more than 70 people.