At least 22 dead, 36 injured after truck carrying Afghan refugees from Pakistan plunges into ditch

At least 22 people were killed and 36 others injured, mostly women and children, after a truck carrying Afghan refugees from Pakistan overturned on a highway in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday (local time).

The incident occurred in Laghman province on the main highway connecting Afghanistan’s capital Kabul with Nangarhar province, AP reported, citing a spokesman for the provincial governor, Abdul Malik Niazai.

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Truck falls into ditch, kills 22

Niazai added that 10 of the dead were children and five were women, and the injured were taken to hospitals in Nangarhar. Provincial Director of Public Health Aminullah Sharif said the accident occurred after the truck fell into a ditch when the driver fell asleep.

The passengers were among thousands of Afghans who had recently returned from Pakistan, which launched a crackdown on migrants in 2023 and has since deported or forced many to leave. Iran also stepped up deportations of Afghan migrants around the same time. Since then, millions of Afghans have returned home from both countries, including many who were born in Pakistan and spent decades living and working there.

Afghanistan–Pakistan relations

Pakistani authorities have tightened their stance on Afghan migrants and refugees in their country, resulting in an outflow that often includes families traveling with their belongings in trucks, The Guardian reported.

Figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration show that 447,400 Afghans have returned from Pakistan since the beginning of the year.

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Traffic accidents common in Afghanistan

Traffic accidents are common throughout Afghanistan, where roads are poorly maintained and drivers routinely ignore traffic laws.

In a separate accident in the eastern province of Nuristan, a car plunged off the road into a river on Friday evening, injuring the driver and leaving four passengers missing, the governor’s office said on Saturday. Rescuers were searching for the four, the authority said.

In August last year, at least 78 people were killed after a bus collided with a truck in western Afghanistan. The bus was carrying Afghans who had recently been deported from Iran. The accident happened in Guzara district of Herat province and caused an explosive fire.

In 2025, over 1.5 million people returned to Kabul by August from Tehran and Islamabad, both of which resorted to pushing migrants out after decades of hosting them, according to the UN migration agency. Many of the deportees often spent years outside the country and arrived with nowhere to go, few belongings, and faced challenges resettling in a country marked by endemic poverty and high unemployment.

There have been several serious road accidents involving fuel tankers in Afghanistan in recent years.

In December 2024, two separate crashes involving buses, a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway in central Afghanistan left at least 52 dead.

Earlier, in March 2024, a bus crashed into a fuel tanker in southern Helmand province, sparking a fire that killed more than 20 people and injured 38 others.

A similar incident was reported in December 2022 in Salang Pass, where a fuel tanker overturned and caught fire, resulting in the death of 31 people.