In this photo released by the Pakistan Air Force, bodies of Shiite Muslim pilgrims who were killed in a bus crash in Iran while heading to Iraq for a pilgrimage, arrive at an airbase in Jacobabad, Pakistan, on Augist 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

“Pakistan brought home on Friday (August 23, 2024) the bodies of 28 Shiite pilgrims killed in a bus crash in Iran this week while heading to Iraq for a pilgrimage. A Pakistani military aircraft also flew back 23 pilgrims injured in the accident,” officials said.

Earlier in the day in Iran, officials handed over the bodies of the crash victims to Pakistani diplomats. Prayer services were held in both Iran and later in Pakistan.

Funeral were to take place in the victims’ home districts on Saturday (August 24, 2024). The pilgrims were from Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, according to Nasir Shah, a provincial government spokesman.

The plane, requested by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for the repatriation, landed at the airport in Jacobabad, about 1,000 km southwest from the capital of Islamabad. The coffins, covered in Pakistan’s national flag, were handed over to the victims’ relatives for burial.

State-run PTV broadcast the ceremony at the Jacobabad airport, where relatives of the victims cried and hugged each other.

Authorities have not revealed the cause of the crash near the city of Taft, some 500 km southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.

In a state TV report, Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local Iranian emergency official, blamed the crash on the bus brakes failing and a lack of attention by the driver. A surveillance video later aired by the state TV showed the bus speeding past a parked car into a dirt lot just before the crash, narrowly missing bystanders.

Iran has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records with some 17,000 deaths annually. The grave toll is blamed on wide disregard for traffic laws, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services in its vast rural areas.

The pilgrims had been on their way to Iraq’s holy city of Karbala, to commemorate Arbaeen — Arabic for the number 40 — marking the end of the annual 40-day mourning period after the date of the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, a central figure in Shiite Islam.

Hussein died at the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces in the Battle of Karbala, during the tumultuous 1st century of Islam’s history.

Shiite pilgrims march on their way to Karbala for Arbaeen in Babil, Iraq. Representational image.
| Photo Credit: AP

A bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims overturned in Iran, killing 28 passengers and injuring another 23 people, the Iranian Students News Agency reported on Wednesday (August 21, 2024).

The crash happened Tuesday (August 20) night in the central Iranian province of Yazd, said Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local emergency official, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Another 23 people suffered injuries in the crash, 14 of them serious, he added.

There had been 51 people on board at the time of the crash.

The pilgrims had been on their way to Iraq to commemorate Arbaeen, which marks the 40th day following the death of a Shiite saint in the 7th century. Pilgrims gather in Karbala, Iraq, in what’s regarded as the largest annual public gathering in the world.

Authorities offered no immediate cause for the crash. However, Iran has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records with some 17,000 deaths annually. The grave toll is blamed on wide disregard for traffic laws, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services in its vast rural areas.

In a separate incident, a bus crash early Wednesday (August 21, 2024) in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province killed six people and injured 18, authorities said.