Forty-five people died when a bus collided with the wreckage of a truck that had been attacked by Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, officials said.
The battered oil tanker had been left in the middle of a narrow road near the border of Kandahar and Helmand provinces for several days as police considered the area too dangerous to enter, the officials said.
Before sunrise on Friday, the bus smashed into the truck and burst into flames, said Abdul Razaq, the provincial police chief of Kandahar. Police, soldiers and ambulances rushed to the crash site where many of the victims were burned beyond recognition.
One survivor, Mohammad Habib, cried as he searched for his brother. "I don't care about my belongings and money that were burned inside the bus, but please help me find my brother, dead or alive," he told AP Television News. "How will I face my mother without him?"
Javeed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, said 45 people had died and 10 more were injured.
Razaq said the bus had begun its journey in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, and was scheduled to stop in Kandahar city and then travel north to Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan. Last September a bus and truck collided and burst into flames in the eastern province of Ghazni, killing at least 51 people.
Separately on Friday, the US-led international military coalition said Afghan and foreign forces had arrested about 10 insurgents in the past two days in four provinces, including several Taliban fighters in Kandahar.