Nearly all fatalities from Afghanistan bus crash were deportees from Iran

More than 70 Afghans, many of whom had recently been deported from Iran, died in a tragic accident in western Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Out of the 78 killed in the accident, 71 were traveling back to Afghanistan after being expelled or forcibly removed from Iran, a Taliban interior ministry spokesperson told media.

The passenger bus, made up of mostly women and 17 children, collided with a fuel truck and a motorcycle in Herat province as it was on its way to Kabul.

The collision resulted in an explosive fire, according to officials and eyewitnesses.

"There was a lot of fire... a lot of screaming, but we couldn't even get within 160 feet to rescue anyone," eyewitness Akbar Tawakoli, 34, told AFP.

"Only three people were saved from the bus," Tawakoli added. "They were also on fire and their clothes were burnt."

Two of the three survivors from the crash later died of their injuries. 

Due to the nature of people's injuries, many of those who died were "unidentifiable", according to Mohammad Janan Moqadas, the chief physician at the military hospital that victims were taken to.

Government news organisation Bakhtar News Agency said it was one of the deadliest accidents to have happened in recent years.

Deportations

The accident was a double tragedy as most of its victims were returning to Afghanistan after being deported from Iran.

Millions of Afghans have fled to neighbouring Iran and Pakistan since the 1970s, and there have been major waves of migration from the country after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US invasion in 2003 and when the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Afghan refugees have faced systemic discrimination, including in the US, Iran and Pakistan.

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More than 1.9 million people have returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan from both Iran and Pakistan in 2025, according to UN data from 18 July.

More than 1.5 million of 1.9 million people are returning from Iran, including 410,000 who have been deported from Iran since 24 June.

"Thousands of the returnees are unaccompanied children," a statement by the UN's Human Rights Office said in a press release on 18 July.

"Following the Iran-Israel conflict, forced returns of Afghan nationals have escalated, including those with valid documentation. Security-related discourse has intensified anti-Afghan sentiment."

Iran has approximately six million Afghans living in the country, two million of whom are without legal status. It gave undocumented Afghans a deadline of July to depart voluntarily, saying it could no longer support them.

But since Israel's war on Iran in June, Iranian authorities have forced undocumented Afghans to return home over allegations that some Afghans acted as spies on behalf of Israel.

Critics say this is a pretext for reducing its illegal Afghan population.

Many of those forced to return to Afghanistan have spent years outside the country and return to a country beset by crippled infrastructure due to decades of war, high unemployment and few opportunities.