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HARARE: At least 27 people were killed when a minibus taxi carrying church members collided head-on with a haulage truck in Zimbabwe, police said on Saturday.
The crash occurred on Friday night on a major highway near Chivhu, about 132km south of the capital, Harare.
Police spokesperson Paul Nyathi said the passengers were members of a popular indigenous African Christian denomination known for wearing white robes and were travelling to a conference when the accident occurred.
The truck was reportedly attempting to overtake another vehicle when it collided with the minibus taxi, Nyathi said in a statement.
State broadcaster ZBC News, citing a provincial government minister, reported that 23 people died at the scene, while others later succumbed to their injuries in hospital.
The minibus caught fire following the collision and was reduced to a shell, according to local media reports, which published photographs of the wreckage.
Nyathi said both vehicles were carrying an unspecified number of passengers.
Road crashes involving overcrowded buses, minibus taxis and unregulated sedan taxis are common in Zimbabwe and are frequently attributed to dangerous driving and poor road conditions.
Authorities say human error accounts for about 94% of road accidents in the country, which has one of Africa’s worst road safety records.
Across Africa, road crashes kill around 300,000 people every year, accounting for roughly a quarter of the global road death toll, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
The continent, home to about 1.5 billion people, has only around 3% of the world’s vehicles but records the highest road fatality rate.