Accident: 16 dead, over 40 injured in bus-tanker collision

At least 16 people have been confirmed dead and about forty others injured following the collision between a Yutong bus and a fuel tanker. The accident happened at Gomoa Okyereko on the Accra-Cape Coast Highway in Ghana’s Central Region.

According to a Joynews report, the bus was headed to Buduburam in the Central Region carrying passengers from Abidjan while the tanker was headed for Takoradi. The collision reportedly occurred at dawn on Tuesday with a head-on collision.

The incident occurred due to bad driving after an eyewitness told the Ghana National Fire Services and reported by Joynews that the bus driver regularly veered off his lane throughout the journey. It was during one of those incidents that led the tanker driver to move into the bus driver’s lane.

“So he [tanker driver] rather came into the lane of the Yutong because at the time the Yutong driver had also entered his lane,” Winneba Fire Service Commander DO II Kwesi Hughes.

The bus driver has been crushed per the GNFS’ recounts of the incident to the media and “other passengers on the passenger side of the Yutong were also dismembered, in fact, they were cut into pieces,” the GNFS Commander revealed.

“We have been able to rescue the rescuable lives first, which we have done. We have sent them to the Trauma and Specialist Hospital.” Others have been sent to a nearby hospital.

Also, the commander revealed that they “have been able to tow the Yutong bus to a place of safety. And currently, we are receiving the lifeless body of the driver’s mate after which we will tow the tanker to a place of safety as well so that we will be able to open the traffic”.