At least 10 people were killed when a fuel tanker exploded after a crash on the Hamedan-Sanandaj highway in western Iran, Iranian national broadcaster IRIB reported. Local authorities said the blast followed a collision on Saturday and that six other people suffered injuries, figures described as initial.
The governor of Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, told officials the accident stemmed from a technical fault in the tanker’s braking system. Local officials said emergency crews brought the resulting fire under control quickly, but they did not release the identities of the dead or the injured.
The blast adds to a long pattern of deadly road accidents in Iran, where ageing vehicle fleets, poor road conditions and heavy freight traffic regularly contribute to high casualty rates. The incident echoes a 2018 collision near Sanandaj in which a fuel tanker struck a bus that had stopped to pick up passengers, killing at least 13 people.
International and domestic agencies have repeatedly highlighted Iran’s road safety crisis. UNICEF, cited by local coverage, says Iran’s rate of traffic crashes is 20 times the world’s average. A 2017 report in the Tehran-based Financial Tribune said more than 20,000 people are killed and 800,000 are injured in road accidents in Iran each year.
Authorities presented the braking fault as the immediate cause and described casualty figures as preliminary. Officials offered no further detail on ongoing inquiries, and it remains unclear whether broader inspections or regulatory steps will follow. The lack of immediate information leaves outstanding questions about responsibility, vehicle maintenance and enforcement on a heavily used freight route.
