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52 People Die in Bus Fire in Kazakhstan


Burning vehicles are seen at the site of a fire in Almaty June 27, 2013. A 16-ton tanker rolled over after an accident and set ablaze parked cars and a nearby apartment building, Emergency Ministry reported. REUTERS/Sergey Khodanov (KAZAKHSTAN - Tags: DIS
Burning vehicles are seen at the site of a fire in Almaty June 27, 2013. A 16-ton tanker rolled over after an accident and set ablaze parked cars and a nearby apartment building, Emergency Ministry reported. REUTERS/Sergey Khodanov (KAZAKHSTAN - Tags: DIS

A bus fire in northwestern Kazakhstan killed 52 Uzbek citizens on a route used by migrant workers heading to Russia, the Kazakh Interior Ministry said Thursday.

The bus was traveling along a road in the remote Aktau region that links the Russian city of Samara to Shymkent, a city in southern Kazakhstan close to the Uzbek border.

It was unclear in which direction the bus, a Hungarian-made Ikarus, had been traveling, but the route is widely used to transport Uzbek workers to and from Russia where they often take work on building sites.

Five people managed to escape the burning vehicle, the interior ministry's emergencies department said in a statement. The ministry said the apparent accident had happened at 1030 local time (0430 GMT), but provided no details about its cause.

A photograph posted online from the site showed the bus completely burnedout. Video footage also posted on the Web showed it positioned diagonally across a two-lane freeway in the middle of a snow-covered steppe, in flames and emitting heavy black smoke.

Uzbekistan's foreign ministry said in a statement its embassy staff were en route to the area, roughly midway between the Russian border and the Aral Sea.

Last October, another Kazakh-operated bus carrying more than 50 Uzbeks was hit by a train in Russia after getting stuck on the tracks; 17 people died in that accident.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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