Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
At least 46 people died after four vehicles crashed on a highway in western uganda One of the worst motor accidents in the East African country in recent years.
Police initially put the death toll at 63 in a statement sent to journalists, but later revised this to 46, and said in another statement that some people found unconscious at the crash site were actually still alive. “At the time of the crash, several victims were found unconscious, and some may have been erroneously included in the initial death count,” the statement said.
Several others were injured in the crash that occurred early Wednesday, just after midnight local time, on a highway in Gulu, a major city in northern Uganda.
According to police, two bus drivers traveling in opposite directions tried to overtake other vehicles and collided near Kiryandongo town.
“In the process, both the buses came face to face during overtaking,” police said.
Fatal road accidents are common in Uganda and elsewhere in East Africa, where roads are often narrow. Police usually blame speeding drivers for such accidents. In August, a bus carrying mourners home from a funeral in southwestern Kenya overturned and plunged into a ditch, killing at least 25 people and injuring several others.
The death toll from the latest disaster in Uganda is unusually high, said Red Cross spokeswoman Irene Nakasita, who said the victims were bleeding from their limbs. He said photos from the scene were too gruesome to share.
“The magnitude of this incident is huge,” Nakasita said.
While accident victims can hope to get help from bystanders and other first responders who rush to accident sites, “at night there aren’t even bystanders,” he said.
Most of the injured people are undergoing treatment at a nearby government hospital.
In Uganda, 5,144 people died in road accidents in 2024. According to official police data, this number is set to rise to 4,806 in 2023 and 4,534 in 2022, marking a worrying rise in the total number of people killed or injured in road accidents in recent years.
The latest crime report from the police said that 44.5 per cent of all accidents recorded in 2024 were due to careless overtaking and speeding.
“As the investigation continues, we urge all motorists to exercise maximum caution on the roads, especially to avoid dangerous and reckless overtaking, which is one of the leading causes of accidents in the country,” the police said in a statement after the latest accident.
Road safety campaigner Joseph Bayanga, who has been trying to raise awareness of road carnage in Uganda for years, said apart from reckless driving and poor infrastructure, there is poor enforcement of traffic rules, especially for heavy vehicles operating at night.
He said the accident in Kiryandongo shows he and others have more work to do. “These accidents are just a cruel reminder that we still have a long way to go,” he said. “On the government side, there is a complete lack of enforcement. What is happening on the streets is anarchy.”
Bayanga, who is campaigning as a walker, organizes regular walks from the Ugandan capital Kampala into the countryside, often involving hundreds of followers.
His next event, planned in November, will be a walk of more than 60 kilometers in memory of the thousands of people killed or maimed in road accidents over the past few years, he said.