23, November 2021
At least 45 people killed in bus blaze in Bulgaria 0
At least 45 people, including a dozen minors, were killed after a bus caught fire south of the Bulgarian capital early Tuesday morning, officials said.
A cause has yet to be determined but officials believe a fire broke out on board and the bus crashed into guardrails.
There were no other vehicles involved in the accident, which occurred around 2:00 am (2400 GMT) on a highway about 40 kilometres (26 miles) from Sofia, near the village of Bosnek.
“Of the victims … 12 in total were under the age of 18,” national police chief Stanimir Stanev said.
He told bTV television that 45 of the 52 people on the bus were killed.
Nikolay Nikolov, head of the Fire Safety and Civil Protection department at the interior ministry, told public broadcaster BNT that “seven passengers survived”.
They were taken to a hospital in the capital with serious burns, he added.
According to bTV, the bus was travelling from Turkey’s main city of Istanbul to Skopje in North Macedonia.
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said the victims were probably fellow Macedonians.
“We don’t know if all the victims are from North Macedonia, but we assume so because the bus is registered in the country,” he said in an interview with Nova TV.
But police chief Stanev said while the two drivers of the bus were Macedonian, the passengers were Albanian.
“Initial information shows that 52 people were travelling in the bus, including two drivers with Macedonian nationality and 50 passengers with Albanian nationality,” he said.
Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev and Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov rushed to the site of the crash Tuesday morning, while local media said that the North Macedonian and Albanian premiers were also on their way.
“It’s a terrifying picture in there. I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Rashkov told journalists at the site.
“Nobody can say for certain how many are there and who they were. The bodies are badly burned and have to be identified one by one,” he added.
Bulgaria has a history of deadly bus accidents. Seventeen Bulgarian tourists died in 2018 when their bus skidded on a wet road and overturned.
A total of 628 people died in road accidents in 2019 and 463 in 2020 in the country of 6.9 million people, according to official data. The accidents were often attributed to poor road conditions, outdated cars and speeding.
Source: AFP
23, November 2021
Yaounde: Special Status is to weaken the Ambazonia Interim Gov’t, subjugate Southern Cameroonians 0
The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government says French Cameroun’s main objective out of the war in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is to undermine the Ambazonia Interim Government and subdue the people of Southern Cameroons.
“The 1953 Eastern Regional Crisis in Enugu did not have any spilled over effect into French Cameroun. Our leaders after the Mamfe Conference opted to remain close and intimate with East Cameroun but not at the expense of our sovereignty and dignity,” vice president Dabney Yerima said during a zoom ceremony in memory of the young school girl killed in Bamenda recently by a French Cameroun gendarme.
Yerima underlined that ever since Hon. Joseph Wirba left the French Cameroun National Assembly after he frequently criticized the war in Southern Cameroons as well as the brutal killing of thousands of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians, no other so-called Southern Cameroons CPDM MP has commented on the war including the murder of primary school pupils by French Cameroun uniform officers.
“Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Joseph Beti Assomo are using the Francophone dominated army to kill our people and Philemon Yang, Atanga Nji, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Paul Tasong Victor Mengot and Elung Paul are applauding and passing for cabinet ministers. To me, they are insiders who are assisting La Republique and by extrapolation France to arrive at its goals,” Dabney Yerima pointed out.
Vice President Dabney Yerima stated that these French Cameroun surrogates are now quiet because they are watching Franck Biya who struggled to have Advance Level papers now coming into the political show in Yaoundé changing French Cameroun’s internal equations, and creating a new political structure with his visit to the new Sultan of Foumban in order to weaken the old generation and completely subjugate the people of Southern Cameroons.
“We advise the so-called Southern Cameroons CPDM political elites who seek to weaken the Ambazonia uprising to renounce their acts, as the Ambazonia Interim Government is well-established and deeply-rooted in Southern Cameroons, and no one can either depose it or downplay its role in getting Southern Cameroonians to Buea,” Dabney Yerima noted.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai