ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least 11 people were killed and seven others injured on Saturday evening when a fuel tanker collided with a passenger car on the main Hamadan-Sanandaj highway in Iran’s Kurdistan province, according to local officials and state media.
The accident occurred at around 5 pm near the entrance to Sanandaj, with the tanker immediately bursting into flames and damaging several other vehicles, according to initial reports.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported that the crash “led to the explosion of a fuel tanker” and initially put the death toll at 10.
“The Head of the Emergency and Pre-Hospital Medical Center of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences” said 10 people had died following the accident, according to IRIB.
Most of the victims’ bodies were reportedly completely burned in the fire.
The governor of Sanandaj has declared two days of public mourning following the deadly crash.
The incident comes as Iran continues to record a high number of road fatalities. More than 19,500 people were killed in traffic accidents across the country during the Iranian year that ended on March 20, according to official figures from Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization.
The toll was slightly higher than the 19,435 road deaths recorded the previous year, according to Iran’s state news agency ISNA.
Men accounted for 15,660 of the fatalities, while 3,880 were women, ISNA reported in June, citing the Legal Medicine Organization. Most of the deaths—13,382—occurred on intercity roads.
Iran’s road death toll is particularly high compared with countries with similar populations. Turkey, with a population of about 88 million, recorded around 6,000 road deaths over the same period, while the European Union, with a population of roughly 450 million, recorded about 19,400 fatalities in 2025.
The Legal Medicine Organization also reported 378,729 traffic-related injuries during the year, a 0.7 percent decline from the previous year.
