{"id":1820,"date":"2015-04-11T18:24:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-11T18:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=1820"},"modified":"2015-04-11T18:24:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-11T18:24:45","slug":"at-least-31-including-child-athletes-killed-in-morocco-bus-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/at-least-31-including-child-athletes-killed-in-morocco-bus-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"At least 31 including child athletes killed in Morocco bus crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The bus was packed with youngsters aged between 10 and 14 who were returning from a sports competition &#8211; a Moroccan athlete was also on board<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">RABAT, (Morocco)\u00a0\u2014 More than 30 people have been killed in southern Morocco in a fiery head-on crash between a petrol tanker and a bus carrying young athletes .<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At least 33 people, mostly children, died when the coach collided with the tanker, causing a huge explosion that engulfed both vehicles in flames,\u00a0according to the state news agency and local media reports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nine people were injured and taken to hospital but two later died.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The crash took place just before sunrise on Friday in the district of Chbika, near the southern desert city of Tan-Tan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Local media said that among the killed people are school children who\u00a0were travelling with their coaches and\u00a0were returning had been taking part in an athletics competition.\u00a0&#8220;A majority of the victims are children aged eight to 14,&#8221; an official from the regional sports and youth ministry told.<\/p>\n<p>One survivor said, &#8220;We were sleeping, most of us were sleeping. We heard the explosion, followed by the burning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some reports said they were travelling from the capital, Rabat, to Laayoune, which is in the Western Sahara.<\/p>\n<p>Reports said that celebrated 10-km runner Hassan Issengar, 31, was among the dead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;A majority of the victims are children aged eight to 14,&#8221; a regional official from the sports and youth ministry told.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Road accidents have risen sharply in Morocco in recent years, with car ownership nearly doubling in the past 15 years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An average of 10 people a day are killed in accidents on Morocco\u2019s roads, according to official statistics.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Morocco\u2019s Transport Ministry has indicated that the social costs relating to road deaths and accidents amounts to some 2.5 percent of the country\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bus was packed with youngsters aged between 10 and 14 who were returning from a sports [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[190,189],"class_list":["post-1820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-accidents","tag-morocco"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Morocco-bus-crash.jpg?fit=650%2C354&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-tm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}