At least nine people were killed and 32 others injured on Thursday afternoon in a traffic accident along the Khartoum-Al Gazira road.
The accident took place at Abu Forua area near al-Hasahaisa town, some 143 km south of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, when two passenger buses collided.
“Nine people were killed, nine others seriously injured and 23 suffered light injuries,” Musa Abdul-Ghader Al Sheikh, Director of Traffic Police in Sudan’s Gezira State told reporters.
The traffic police director further said the accident was due to wrong passing by one of the two buses.
The state-owned news agency also reported that all the passengers who died were from one bus. The victims were identified as Musa Mohamed Ahmed, Mutawakil Mustafa al-Bashir, Mohammed Ahmed Awad el Karim, Safiya Ahmed Ibrahim, Awad Allah Abdul-Rahman Ismail, and Abdul-Rahman Sayed Ahmed Ebaid.
Police authorities couldn’t identify three bodies found in the bus, but they were taken to Al-Hasahaisa Hospital mortuary. Seriously wounded people were taken to Khartoum Teaching Hospital for treatment, while mirror injuries were treated in the area.
According to police traffic statistics, 12,648 traffic accidents were registered in 2015, with about 46 percent of them attributed to careless driving and about 41 percent to high speed.
Deadly traffic accidents in Sudan usually happen during Eid periods due to the intensive trips between the capital Khartoum and the country’s other states.