Bus carrying schoolgirls overturns in Kerman, leaving six dead

The head of Kerman Emergency Services announced that the number of victims from the overturning of a bus carrying schoolgirls has reached six dead and 35 injured. Mohammad Saberi added that this bus overturned at 18:31 on Thursday evening, February 7, on the route from Sirch to Kerman. According to this report, the bus was carrying twelfth-grade students from 'Farzanegan School' in Kerman who were returning from a camp. 'Farzanegan' schools in Iran are mainly referred to as gifted schools for girls. The head of Kerman Emergency Services stated that the deceased included 'four students, one instructor, and one boy at the scene of the accident.' Iranian media have pointed to the bus's old age, and the Kerman prosecutor said that if it is proven to be outdated and its role in the accident is established, the transportation company will face consequences. Mehdi Bakhshi also announced the issuance of an arrest warrant for the driver and legal action against the school principal. The head of Emergency Services and the Kerman prosecutor have stated that initial investigations indicate that the bus overturned due to a technical failure in the braking system. Traffic accidents in Iran, primarily attributed to the unsafe and substandard nature of vehicles and roads, result in numerous fatalities each year. According to Abbas Majidi, head of the Legal Medicine Organization, over 20,000 people were killed in accidents last year. The deaths of students in camps have also been repeated several times, including in September 2017 when the overturning of a bus carrying Farzanegan schoolgirls from Hormozgan province to Shiraz resulted in the deaths of seven students. In March 1998, a bus carrying students from Sharif University of Technology fell into a ravine while returning from a mathematics competition, resulting in the deaths of seven students and two faculty members; Maryam Mirzakhani, a brilliant mathematician, was one of the survivors of this incident.