Eleven people were killed and another 25 injured yesterday morning as a bus traveling to Yangon flipped onto its side after a tire blew out, according to Myanmar Highway Police.
The bus was headed towards Yangon from Kalay, a town in Myanmar’s northwestern Sagaing state, when the tire burst, causing the bus to swerve out of control and slam into a guardrail near the 77th mile on the Naypyidaw-Yangon highway, a post on their official Facebook page explains.
Police officers from Oke Shit Kone township and ambulances rushed to the scene, where they began extracting passengers stuck inside the bus as it lay on its side.
Images of the accident have been shared more than 6,500 times on social media.
U La Khun Taung, a passenger on the bus, described the accident in an interview yesterday with Voice Myanmar.
“I was asleep but I think the tire exploded. The bus swerved hard from left to right. I flew from my seat and I heard screaming and shouts from the other passengers,” he told the Burmese-language outlet.
The Yangon-Mandalay highway has been described as the “highway of death,” notorious for its high accident rate and numerous fatalities.
