At least three people have been killed and 48 others wounded when a bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims crashed into a truck in southern Iran, state media reported on Monday.

The Pakistani pilgrims were headed through Iran to Iraq to attend the Arbaeen commemoration, which marks the 40th day of mourning for Imam Husain, the grandson of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said a bus collided with a truck late on Sunday on the main road between Neyriz city in Fars province and Sirjan in Kerman province, leaving “48 wounded and three dead”.

It did not specify how many people were on board the bus.

Colonel Abdol Hashem Dehghani, a Fars traffic police official quoted by IRNA, said the accident was caused by “a technical failure” in the brakes and the driver’s “inability to control the vehicle”.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Mehr News Urdu quoted Neyriz Governor Yaqub Khosrawani as saying that four Pakistani pilgrims lost their lives while 30 others were injured in the incident.

This was the second road accident in less than a week involving Pakistani pilgrims, after a crash in Iran’s Yazd city killed 28 people on the way to Iraq for Arbaeen.

Bodies of the 28 pilgrims were brought to Pakistan via a special flight on Friday night.

Iran has a poor road safety record with over 20,000 deaths in accidents in the year up to March 2024, according to figures from the Iranian judiciary’s Legal Medicine Organisation cited by local media.

The occasion of Arbaeen last year drew a total of 22 million pilgrims, according to official figures.

IRNA said that by August 19 this year, some 25,000 Pakistani pilgrims had entered Iran to reach the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala, where Imam Husain and his brother Abbas are buried.

Condemnations pour in

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a post on X, expressed “regret over the death of Pakistani pilgrims in a bus accident in Iran”.

“The prime minister has instructed the Pakistani embassy to fully cooperate with the families of the deceased and provide the best medical assistance to the injured,” the post read.