Afghan refugee truck crash kills 18, injures 35 in eastern Afghanistan

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At least 18 people, including 10 children and five women, were killed and 35 others injured when a truck carrying Afghan refugees returning from neighboring Pakistan overturned on a major highway in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.

The accident occurred on the main highway linking the Afghan capital, Kabul, with the eastern city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, according to Abdul Malik Niazai, a spokesperson for the governor of Laghman province. The victims were rushed to nearby hospitals in Nangarhar for emergency medical treatment.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Taliban government, expressed deep sorrow over the tragedy, which took place at the conclusion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, and offered condolences to the families of the victims.

Deadly traffic crashes are a frequent occurrence across Afghanistan, largely driven by poorly maintained roads after decades of conflict, reckless driving, and a widespread lack of traffic regulations.

The passengers on board were part of a massive, recent wave of hundreds of thousands of Afghans returning from Pakistan. In 2023, authorities in Islamabad launched a sweeping crackdown on undocumented migrants, deporting or pressuring families to leave. Neighboring Iran intensified its own expulsions of Afghan migrants around the same time.

According to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 447,400 Afghans have returned from Pakistan since the start of this year alone. Because of these tighter migration policies, many families—including individuals who were born in Pakistan and had lived there for decades—are forced to travel back to Afghanistan with all their worldly belongings packed into commercial trucks.

This latest incident follows a similarly devastating crash in August, when a bus carrying Afghan migrants returning from Iran collided with two other vehicles in western Afghanistan, killing 78 people, including 19 children.