As at least 46 people die in Bulgaria in the worst bus crash in Europe in a decade, we look at similar tragedies on the continent over the past 10 years.
– 2021: disaster in Bulgaria –
At least 46 people, including 12 minors, died when a bus to North Macedonia’s capital Skopje from Istanbul caught fire in Bulgaria on Tuesday morning. Most of its passengers are believed to be from the Macedonian Albanian minority.
– 2019: Macedonia weeps –
NORTH MACEDONIA: The Balkan country declares two days of national mourning as 16 dead and 37 injured when a bus traveling between the mainly Albanian capital Skopje and Tetovo overturned on February 13.
PORTUGAL: Twenty-nine German tourists die when their bus leaves the road for a restaurant on the mountainous island of Madeira on April 17.
RUSSIA: A bus plunges from a bridge into a frozen river in Siberia on December 1, killing 19 people.
– 2018: Burned migrants –
TURKEY: Seventeen migrants smuggled through Turkey die and 36 are injured when their bus catches fire after hitting a pole on March 29 near Kars in the east of the country. Most were Iranians, Afghans and Pakistanis.
BULGARIA: Twenty pilgrims died after their bus overturned in heavy rains north of Sofia during a trip to an Orthodox monastery on August 25.
– 2017: The Underworld of Buses –
GERMANY: Eighteen elderly tourists from Saxony die when their tour bus catches fire after colliding with a truck in Bavaria on July 3.
ITALY: Sixteen people – most of them Hungarian teenagers returning from a ski trip to France – die on January 21 when their bus catches fire after crashing near the city of Verona in the north of the country.
TURKEY: At least 23 people die and 11 others are seriously injured when a bus carrying women and children plunges off a cliff near the resort town of Marmaris in southwest Turkey on May 13.
RUSSIA: At least 17 workers die when their bus plunges from a jetty into the Black Sea on the Taman Peninsula near Crimea on August 25.
Sixteen people died when a train collided with a broken down bus carrying mainly Uzbek passengers at a level crossing east of Moscow on October 6.
– 2015: Worse for 30 years –
FRANCE: In France’s worst road accident in three decades, 43 people die when a bus carrying a retirement club collides with a truck and catches fire near Puisseguin, in the southwest of the country, on October 23 .
– 2014: Explosion of an oil tanker –
TURKEY: An oil tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) overturns and explodes on a highway in the southeast on July 22, killing 26 people in two burning buses.
Twenty-one people die in central Turkey on January 23 when their bus overturns on icy roads at night.
– 2013: Diving in the ravine –
MONTENEGRO: Eighteen Romanians were killed and 31 others injured when their bus skidded off a windy mountain road in Montenegro on June 23 and fell into a ravine.
RUSSIA: Eighteen were also killed when a truck crashed into a bus near Moscow on July 13, cutting it in half.
– 2012: 22 children killed –
SWITZERLAND: Twenty-eight people, including 22 children, die in an accident in Sierre, southern Switzerland, as they return to Belgium after a ski vacation on March 13.
– 2011: Students crushed –
TURKEY: Twenty-five people, mostly students, were killed when a truck loaded with bricks collided with a bus near Salat, a village in Diyarbakir province, on December 21.
