Bulgaria: Possible scenarios for the multi-fatal accident
The driver's human error or mechanical failure are the two original versions of the causes of the accident, according to the head of the Bulgarian Investigation Service.
At least 46 people, including 12 children, were killed when a bus carrying tourists, mostly from northern Macedonia, caught fire on a highway in western Bulgaria at around 2am local time on Tuesday.
Seven people, who managed to get out of the burning vehicle, were taken to the Pirogov Emergency Hospital in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, and are being treated in stable condition, according to hospital staff.
They have suffered burns and a broken leg.
The Bulgarian Interior Ministry announced that 46 people had lost their lives, making the accident the deadliest in the Balkan country's history.
Interim Interior Minister Boyko Raskov said the bodies were "stacked inside the vehicle and turned to ashes".
"The picture is scary, scary. I have never seen anything like it before," he told reporters at the scene.
The cause of the accident is unclear, but the bus appears to have hit a guardrail either before or after it caught fire, Bulgarian officials said.
The accident took place on the Struma highway, which is about 30km west of Sofia, they said.
The hikers were returning to Skopje, the capital of Northern Macedonia, after a weekend of leisure in Istanbul, about 800km away.
'UNCONCEPTABLE TRAGEDY'
According to the head of the Bulgarian Investigation Service, Boroslav Sarafov, four buses from a travel agency in northern Macedonia entered Bulgarian territory late Monday night from Turkey.
"Driver human error or mechanical failure are the two original versions of the causes of the accident," he said.
Television footage shows the bus completely burned in the middle of the highway, which was wet due to rain.
"This is a huge tragedy," the Prime Minister of Northern Macedonia, Zoran Zaef, told reporters in Sofia, expressing his condolences to the relatives of the victims.
Zaef said the passengers were all from northern Macedonia, but there appeared to be a Serb and a Belgian among them. It is not clear, however, whether these two people are among the dead or injured.
Zaef said he spoke to one of the seven survivors, who described to him that the passengers were asleep and woke up to the sound of an explosion.
He said those sitting in the back seats of the bus managed to break a window and jump out.
Zaef added that the passengers came from various communities in northern Macedonia, a country of two million people bordering Bulgaria and home to an Albanian minority.
In Skopje, 31-year-old Albanian-speaking Osman told Reuters he went to the travel agency with his brother and sister to ask for information about their parents' fate.
"We do not know if they were in the burnt bus or not. We have no information about them. The agency does not answer the phone. We may have to go to Bulgaria," he said.
Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Jatska said the passengers came from the Albanian community in northern Macedonia.
"Great sadness for the 45 lives of Albanians from Northern Macedonia who were lost in this tragic accident in Bulgaria," he wrote on Twitter.
