14 dead

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 31 - Fourteen people have been killed after a matatu they were traveling in collided head-on with a truck in Kibwezi along the Nairobi Mombasa highway.

Police say the chartered matatu was carrying 15 passengers who were traveling from Bungoma in Western Kenya to attend a church function at the Miracle Pentecostal Church in Mariakani when the accident occurred at 5.30 am.
Only one woman in the matatu survived.

“It is so unfortunate to lose such a large number of people at ago, we have lost 14 passengers who were traveling in the matatu,” Sarah Duncan, police chief for Makindu division said.

“We only had one survivor, the only woman who came out alive from the matatu; all the other passengers have died,” she said when reached on telephone.

She said that the driver and turn boy of the truck had also survived the 5.30 am crash and were admitted to the Makindu district hospital together with the woman who survived in the matatu.

“Those killed were eight women and six men and they all died on impact,” she added.

She said some families of the deaced and those injured had been contacted and informed about the accident.

On Thursday last week, eight people were killed and 37 others seriously wounded in another accident that occurred in Kathini along the Nairobi-Machakos highway when two minibuses collided.