The Mangled accident vehicle
At least 20 people were reportedly killed while several others got injured when a commercial Sprinter bus collided with a fully loaded tanker on the Kumasi-Obuasi highway yesterday.
The accident happened at about 2:30pm between Ofoase-Kokoben and Anwiankwanta, about 40 kilometers from Kumasi.
It took rescuers, made up of fire and police officers, close to an hour to get all the passengers out of the bus with registration number AW 1568 Z that was traveling from Kumasi to Dunkwa-on-Offin in the Central Region.
An eyewitness said some of the victims were taken to the Anwiankwanta and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospitals, with two of them in critical condition.
According to him, 20 persons, including a baby, were taken from the scene to the morgue.
He stated that the cause of the fatal accident was not yet clear to him, but some residents told him the front tyre of the bus got burst as the driver descended the road from Ofoase-Kokoben Junction towards Anwiankwanta.
“Before anyone could think of something else, the bus was in serious collision with the truck,” he quoted residents as saying.
The eyewitness told DAILY GUIDE that the driver of the truck, registered GN 1507- 13, tried to save the situation, but could not as the bus driver had taken over his lane.
“It was really a mess with body parts,” he noted, and added that some of the passengers were thrown out of the bus, while others were trapped inside the vehicle with broken limbs and crushed heads.
Firefighters worked hard to rescue those stuck and also diluted the fuel that leaked onto the road while the police officers and other rescuers on the scene helped transport the wounded.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi