At least 45 people died when a bus caught fire and crashed on a highway in western Bulgaria on Tuesday, officials said.
The bus had North Macedonian plates, according to the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, and local news outlets reported that most of the victims were from that country.
Nikolai Nikolov, the head of the fire safety department at the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, told BTV television that 52 people had been traveling on the bus when it crashed around 2 a.m. local time. BTV said that the accident had occurred on the Struma Motorway near the village of Bosnek as the bus was traveling from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to Blagoevgrad, in the country’s southwest.
“At least 45 people were killed after a bus caught fire and crashed, or crashed and then caught fire,” Mr. Nikolov was quoted as saying, according to Reuters. He added that children had been among the victims.
North Macedonia’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, told BTV that the bus had taken a trip to Istanbul over the weekend.
Seven people with burns and lacerations were taken to Pirogov Hospital in Sofia, Maya Argirova, head of the burn clinic there, told reporters.
Prime Minister Zoran Zaev of North Macedonia visited the hospital on Tuesday and spoke with some of the survivors.
“It is a terrible tragedy because many of them are children,” he said, adding that he had spoken to one individual who had managed to break one of the vehicle’s windows and help several people escape. “Unfortunately, the others were less fortunate,” he said.
A spokeswoman from Pirogov Hospital confirmed that seven people who had been in the crash were being treated there. They were in stable condition, she said by text message.
Additional details were not immediately available.
On Tuesday, the Bulgarian minister for foreign affairs, Svetlan Stoev, and Mr. Osmani of North Macedonia spoke by phone, according to a news release posted on the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Osmani was en route to Pirogov Hospital, where he would meet with Mr. Stoev, according to the release.
On Twitter, Mr. Stoev posted that Bulgaria would do everything to take care of the victims and to find the cause of the “tragedy.”
Stefan Yanev, the acting prime minister of Bulgaria, visited the site of the crash. “This news shook us,” he told reporters, adding that his government was working swiftly to investigate what had happened.
In 2018, a tourist bus carrying 33 pilgrims from a village north of the capital to a monastery crashed near Sofia, killing at least 16 people and injuring 26 others.
Boryana Dzhambazova contributed reporting.