A two-bus collision in Iran killed 44 people and injured 39 others on Tuesday, the most serious road accident in the country for years.
The accident took place late on Monday along the highway between Qom and Tehran, according to the ISNA news agency.
“The driver of a bus travelling from Isfahan lost control of his vehicle after one of his tyres burst. He hit a car before finding himself in the oncoming lane, where he hit another bus. The two vehicles caught fire immediately,” said Colonel Ardeshir Jamshidi-rad, the head of traffic police in the province of Qom, according to Agence France Presse.
Iran was once notorious for its dangerous roads - according to AFP figures, in the 1990s, there were around 28,000 deaths per year for the country's four million cars.
The number of road deaths has dropped to around 20,000 every year since 2011 despite the number of cars in Iran growing to 17 million, AFP reported.
