Twenty two students burn to death in Iran road crash

Tehran: A bus carrying hardliners on a tour of sites from the Iran-Iraq war collided with a fuel truck on a highway on Sunday in western Iran, killing 22 people and injuring seven others, the state news agency Irna reported.

The bus passengers were on a tour organised by Rahiyan-e-Nur, an organisation affiliated to the Basij, the volunteer para-military wing of the Revolutionary Guards seen as a bastion of extreme backers of the Islamic revolution.

The group, whose name means "those heading to the light," organises tours by Basiji families and hardline students to battlefields from Iran's 1980-1988 war with neighbouring Iraq to visit graves and commemorate the fighting.

Speeding blamed

Hundreds of thousands go to these sites every year during the school break for this week's Iranian New Year's holiday, Nowruz.

The bus was heading back from the tour when the fuel truck coming from the other direction rammed into it on a mountain road between Andimeshk and Pol-e-Dokhtar, about 700km southwest of Tehran, Irna reported.

Police Col. Mohammad Reza Cheginizadeh said the truck driver was speeding and lost control on a turn, the agency said.

"Both vehicles caught fire after the collision," Cheginizadeh said. Many of the bodies of the 22 dead were too badly burned to identify, Irna said. Seven injured were taken to nearby hospitals. The report did not specify the ages of the passengers.

Iran has one of the worst road safety records in the world. More than 26,000 people lose their lives in road accidents every year.

The high death toll is blamed on unsafe vehicles, disregard for traffic rules and inadequate emergency services.