"The driver fell asleep - I grabbed my fiancée and we jumped .."

The tragedy that struck Bulgaria is shocking. The deadly car accident in Bulgaria, when on Tuesday morning a bus transporting passengers to Skopje from a trip to Istanbul crashed and caught fire, resulting in the death of 46 people, according to the authorities.

Skopje Attorney General Lubomir Jovevski, who visited the crash site, said 12 children had been confirmed dead and seven had been taken to hospitals for treatment.

Most of the victims are between 25 and 30 years old, according to local media, with the oldest being 63 years old.

The cause of the crash was not immediately confirmed, but it appeared that the bus hit a guard rail on the highway, crashed and caught fire. The flames were in the front of the bus, allowing the few survivors sitting in the back of the vehicle to find time to escape.

Among the survivors are five Skopje citizens, a Serb and a Belgian, according to the Macedonian Foreign Ministry. The patients - four men and three women - suffered burns and injuries, but were all in stable condition, said Dr Lyubo Topkov of Pirogov Hospital, where they were taken.

Shocking testimony

Lulzim Suleimani is one of the survivors of the tragedy in Bulgaria, in an interview through the hospital he claimed that the accident was caused because the driver had fallen asleep.

The young man stated that he broke the glass and managed to escape with his fiancée and other people.

"The driver must have fallen asleep. The bus fell to the curb and then the tires burst. Then it was engulfed in flames. The bus was full of smoke. I broke the glass and jumped out with my fiancée and some other people. Many screams were heard on the bus. Then I do not know what happened, after I left 200 meters from the bus.

I was 4 days with my fiancée on vacation. The youngest child was 4 years old. It was raining. The only cause of the accident is the driver's drowsiness.

My fiancée underwent surgery, my knees were injured. "There are fractures," said Lulzim Suleimani from Presevo in Serbia, who was traveling with his fiancée from Kumanovo to Skopje. Lulzim Suleimani had also posted on social media, two days ago, of himself and his fiancée, from Istanbul.

According to Bulgarian officials, it will take some time to identify most of the victims, as they are charred and not easy to identify.

Speaking to the media, the director of the Bulgarian National Investigation Service, Borislav Sarafov, said that there is close and excellent co-operation between Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia and that all the necessary documents are expected from Skopje in order for the identification process to proceed. and deformed bodies by the DNA method.

Source: protothema