Steph Deschamps / August 22, 2022
At least 16 people were killed and 29 injured after a truck accidentally crashed into a crowd in a southeastern Turkish town, Turkey's health minister said Saturday.
Sixteen people died and 29 others were injured, eight of them seriously, in the accident that occurred when a truck's brakes failed and it crashed into a crowd in Derik, Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
Videos released by the Turkish press show a driver losing control of his truck, hitting several vehicles and pedestrians trying to flee at full speed.
According to the official Turkish news agency Anadolu, a traffic accident involving three vehicles had occurred at the same location shortly before, and rescue teams were on the scene when the truck plowed into the crowd.
Turkey had already been plunged into mourning earlier in the day, when an accident involving an ambulance and a bus killed 16 people and injured 21 others on a highway linking the city of Gaziantep to Nizip.
According to the Turkish news agency DHA, an ambulance, a fire truck and a vehicle belonging to a team of journalists - who were on their way to the scene of an accident - were hit head-on by a bus travelling on the same highway.
Four rescue workers, three firefighters and two journalists from the Turkish news agency Ilhas were among the 16 dead, according to local media.
Images broadcast by the DHA agency showed the back of an ambulance partially shredded as well as the bus involved in the accident, lying on one side and with its front ripped open.