In this photo released by the Pakistan Air Force, bodies of Shia Muslim pilgrims who died in a bus accident in Iran while on their way to Iraq for pilgrimage arrive at an airbase in Jacobabad, Pakistan, on August 24, 2024. | Photo credit: AP
Pakistan repatriated the bodies of the deceased on Friday (August 23, 2024). 28 Shia pilgrims killed in bus accident in Iran Officials said the accident occurred while the pilgrims were on their way to a pilgrimage in Iraq this week. A Pakistani military plane also flew in to bring back 23 pilgrims injured in the accident.
Earlier, authorities in Iran handed over the bodies of the crash victims to Pakistani diplomats. Prayer meetings were held in Iran and later in Pakistan as well.
The funeral will be held in the victims’ home districts on Saturday (August 24, 2024). According to provincial government spokesman Nasir Shah, the pilgrims were from Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
Aircraft, requested by Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif The planes for repatriation landed at Jacobabad airport, about 1,000 km southwest of the capital Islamabad. The coffins, covered with Pakistan’s national flag, were handed over to the relatives of the victims for burial.
State-run PTV The ceremony held at the Jacobabad airport was telecast, where relatives of the victims were crying and hugging each other.
Officials have not given the cause of the accident, which occurred near the city of Taft, about 500 kilometers southeast of the Iranian capital Tehran.
In a state TV report, local Iranian emergency official Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh blamed the bus’s brakes failing and the driver’s inattention for the accident. A surveillance video later broadcast by state TV showed the bus skidding into a mud field, overtaking a parked car just before the crash, narrowly missing people nearby.
Iran has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records, with around 17,000 people killed each year. The serious accidents are attributed to ignorance of traffic rules, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services in its vast rural areas.
The pilgrims were heading to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq, where they were praying to commemorate Arbaeen (the number 40 in Arabic), marking the end of the annual 40-day mourning period following the seventh-century death of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a prominent figure in Shia Islam.
During the tumultuous first century of Islamic history, Hussein died at the hands of Muslim Umayyad forces at the Battle of Karbala.