IIn Turkey, two serious traffic accidents occurred within less than 24 hours, killing a total of around 32 people. The first accident happened in the southeast of the country between Gaziantep and Nizip. Among the victims are firefighters, medical staff and two journalists, said the governor of the province of Gaziantep, Davut Gul, in an interview at the accident site on Saturday. They were originally there because of the report of a previous accident. An approaching bus then had an accident, rolled over and hit an ambulance and the journalists’ broadcast van. 22 other people were injured.
The two journalists worked for the state-affiliated agency IHA, according to the state broadcaster TRT. Loud sobbing could be heard in a broadcaster’s report. The agency’s cameraman, who was on hand to cover the deaths of his colleagues, “couldn’t hold back his tears,” TRT said. The injured are currently being treated in hospital. Nothing was initially known about the degree of the injury.
Just a few hours later, a second serious traffic accident occurred in Turkey, killing at least 16 people. A truck crashed into a crowd in the city of Derik in southeastern Turkey when its brakes failed, Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter. The accident in Mardin province injured 29 people, eight of them seriously.