Tanzania crash kills at least 28

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A lorry driver lost control of its brakes and slammed into two other vehicles in Tanzania, killing at least 28 people in one of the worst recent road accidents in the country, officials said Sunday.

One of the vehicles struck in the accident late Saturday, a minibus, was hurled into a river in the country's southwest, near the border with Zambia, local police chief Benjamin Kuzaga said in a statement.

Those killed included 10 women and four children, Kuzaga said, blaming the truck driver's "negligence".

"The cause of the accident has been attributed to the negligence of the lorry driver, who failed to control the vehicle on the steep Iwambi hill," he said.

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on X, formerly Twitter, that she learnt of the deadly accident "with deep sorrow".

Road accidents are common in Tanzania, with a 2018 report by the World Health Organization citing 3,256 deaths in 2016 according to official figures -- but estimating that the actual number of deaths was between 13,000 and 19,000.

In 2024, at least 25 people including an American, a South Africa and a Kenyan, were killed in the country's north when a truck collided with three other vehicles.