Kenya bus crash: 24 mourners killed as church bus hits cement truck near Mtito Andei

At least 24 people were killed and 24 injured when a church bus carrying mourners collided with a cement truck on the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway in Kenya on Sunday morning, police and hospital officials said, Al Jazeera reported.

The crash happened at about 7:45am local time (9:45am PKT) in the Kanga area near Mtito Andei, in Makueni County in south-eastern Kenya. The bus, owned by Power of the Word Church International in Mombasa, was bringing mourners home from a pastor's funeral in western Kenya. They had stopped for breakfast shortly before.

What caused the crash

The cause is still under investigation. Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif told Kenya's The Standard that the bus driver tried to overtake several vehicles and hit an oncoming truck, and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) named dangerous overtaking as a possible cause. One survivor gave a different account, saying the truck hit the bus from behind.

The same highway, three weeks apart

On 3 October, a multi-vehicle crash near Salama on the same highway killed 17 people, most of them Catholic pilgrims. Police said that crash too began with a truck driver overtaking another truck, and the NTSA had already flagged the stretch as a hotspot.

Kenya's road deaths, by the numbers

Figures are the NTSA's, as reported by Kenyan media and Al Jazeera.

Government response

President William Ruto offered condolences and ordered inspections of public transport vehicles. Transport Minister Davis Chirchir promised tougher enforcement against speeding and unsafe overtaking, repairs to dangerous road sections and stricter training and checks for commercial drivers. "We cannot continue treating road safety as business as usual," he said. The NTSA has asked for road crashes to be declared a national disaster.

Closer to home

Pakistan had its own deadly road crash at the weekend, when seven people died as a jeep fell from a landslide-hit road near Muzaffarabad. Before a long road trip, plan your stops and costs with our fuel cost calculator.