Bus Carrying Serbian Passengers Crashes in Bulgaria
The crash happened around 3 a.m., roughly 150 kilometers from Sofia. The tour bus was carrying Serbian passengers returning home from Kusadasi.
A tour bus carrying passengers from Serbia back home went off the road in Bulgaria early this morning. The vehicle ended up in a ditch beside the road and rolled onto its side. The crash happened around 3 a.m., roughly 150 kilometers from Sofia. A large number of Serbian passengers were on board.
The group was returning from Kusadasi, a resort town on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Most of them were young people heading home from summer vacation, and most were asleep when the bus left the road. The trip back to Serbia was being made overland, through Bulgarian territory.
How many people were injured?
No official injury count had been released as of this morning. Early reports around 9:27 a.m. said there was no confirmed information about possible injuries. Reports published around 10:24 a.m. stated that there were injuries, but gave no figure.
The gap between those two accounts has not been settled by any official statement. For now, the only thing that can be said is that people were injured. How many, and how serious the injuries are, remains unknown. Where the injured were taken has also not been disclosed.
The time gap is a separate issue on its own. The bus left the road around 3 a.m., while the first reports in Serbia did not appear until after 9 a.m. More than six hours passed between the crash and the first report, and no public information about it was available during that window.
What else is unknown
The circumstances of the crash have not been established. Several basic facts were missing this morning:
- the total number of passengers on the bus
- the number of injured and the severity of their injuries
- which hospitals the injured were taken to
- the driver’s status, including who was at the wheel at the time
- the exact location and stretch of road where the bus rolled over
The only geographic detail released so far is the distance, roughly 150 kilometers from Sofia. Neither the municipality nor the name of the road has been given. Going off the road into a ditch and rolling onto its side are the only details of the crash itself that have been described. Anything beyond that is, for now, speculation.
The 2022 crash is a separate case
Alongside this morning’s news, posts about an older crash have been circulating online, and the two events are easily mixed up. A crash involving a bus carrying members of a folk dance ensemble from Batajnica happened in August 2022, near Stara Zagora. That case is tied to reports of eight children and four adults on board, as well as the response at the time from ambassador Zeljko Jovic.
That was a separate event from four years ago. None of those details apply to this morning’s crash in Bulgaria. The same goes for photos and videos circulating alongside today’s news. Until their origin is confirmed, they cannot be linked to this crash.
What happens next
No official figures were available this morning. Until they are released, any injury count that circulates remains unconfirmed, no matter how many times it gets repeated. The same applies to the cause of the crash, on which nothing has been established.
In situations like this, families of the passengers usually get information fastest through the tour operator that organized the trip and through diplomatic missions. Official confirmation of the injured’s condition comes slower than the first reports, but it is the only information that can be treated as reliable at this point.
