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An intercity bus rolled off a road in southern Turkey’s Antalya province on Sunday, killing nine people and injuring dozens more, according to local officials.
Images showed the vehicle lying on its side on an embankment off a highway slip road in Döşemealtı, a district to the northwest of Antalya city centre.
Ahmet Kodaz, a passenger who survived the crash, described the terrifying moments before the accident. “We were travelling from Isparta to Antalya. There was already fog on the road, and the driver was going very fast,” he said. “When we came to a bend, the bus couldn’t make the turn. First, it tilted sideways and slid, then it got stuck in the barrier, and then we rolled down the embankment with the passengers.”
Hulusi Şahin, the Governor of Antalya, confirmed the death toll. “A passenger bus that departed from Tekirdağ last night with 34 passengers on board veered off the road and rolled into a ravine at approximately 10:20 this morning near the Kömürler intersection in the Döşemealtı district of Antalya after failing to negotiate a bend,” he said.
Officials said seven of the injured were reported to be in critical condition, some suffering severe wounds possibly requiring amputations. The driver was among those killed.
Antalya, a popular Mediterranean tourist destination, has been hit by heavy rainfall in recent days, and fog was reported along the route at the time of the crash.
In a separate accident the same day, seven people were killed in a head‑on collision in Burdur, around 65 kilometres north of Döşemealtı.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya took to social media to lament a “traffic culture” that saw 6,351 people die on Turkey’s roads in 2024 and outline existing proposals to tighten traffic laws