Kigali evacuates Uganda crash victims

Rwandan government authorities have evacuated several people to Kigali who were injured in a Ugandan road accident involving a bus and a UN truck, Rwandan Police spokesman Damas Gatare told IRIN on Tuesday.

Two Rwandan military helicopters and two ambulances were used to evacuate the seriously injured, he said in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Doctors from Uganda's Kabale Hospital coordinated the evacuation.

Five of the 20 people currently under intensive care in three major Kigali hospitals are Burundians, he said.

Gatare said 47 people died, 33 of them on the spot, and 30 others sustained serious injuries in Monday’s accident that occurred some 5 km into Uganda, from the Rwandan border.

He said 16 people died in a Ugandan hospital due to serious head and abdominal injuries sustained in the accident between the bus and the trailer carrying UN World Food Programme relief food to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The bus was travelling from Kigali to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, with passengers from Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda.

Meanwhile, a number of people had by Tuesday identified their dead. "We have transported the relatives of the deceased to Kabale Hospital to go and identify the remains," Gatera told IRIN.

A doctor at Rwanda's military hospital in Kigali, where some of the injured are admitted, said that most of the patients sustained major head and abdominal injuries and others had severe fractures.

"The injuries sustained are grave," Dr Charles Rutakubana of Kanombe Hospital told IRIN.

However, he said, the situation was now under control. "We have the necessary equipment to handle such cases."

The dead were transported by road from Kabale Hospital, some 95 km from Kigali.

President Paul Kagame has sent a message of condolence to the bereaved families.