A TRAFFIC accident in western Afghanistan has killed 79 people, including 17 children, most of them Afghan migrants deported from Iran, officials said today.

The bus was going to Kabul when it caught fire on Tuesday night after colliding with a lorry and motorcycle in Herat province.

Everyone aboard was killed, along with two people in the other vehicles, Taliban official Ahmadullah Mottaqi told BBC Pashto.

“All the passengers were migrants who had boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala,” near the Afghanistan–Iran border, provincial governor spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told the AFP news agency.

Herat police blamed the tragedy on the bus driver’s “excessive speed and negligence.”

Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, where decades of conflict have left roads damaged and driving laws poorly enforced.

Iran has stepped up deportations of undocumented Afghans, citing security concerns since its brief war with Israel in June.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, the United Nations says, with many forcibly returned.

Save the Children Afghanistan director Arshad Malik said: “The return of so many people is creating an additional strain on already overstretched resources and this new wave of refugees comes at a time when Afghanistan is starting to feel the brutal impacts of aid cuts.”