Egyptians killed in Istanbul pileup identified

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

Three people were killed and 30 others were injured in the pileup on the TEM.

Two Egyptian citizens who were killed in a major pileup on Istanbul's TEM highway on Sunday were identified today. 

Kartal Training and Research hospital identified the Egyptian citizens as Fadi Askander and Germin Wanis. 

Three people were killed and 30 were injured in a major traffic accident on Istanbul’s TEM highway in the district of Tuzla on the city’s Anatolian side when a tourist bus on the way to Istanbul from the northwestern province of Bursa crashed into another bus coming from the opposite direction, 11 other vehicles could not react in time and crashed due to the frozen road. 

After the initial accident two ambulances, a police vehicle and a fire truck that had rushed to the scene crashed as well.

Turkish truck driver Mehmet Zahit Aslan and two Egyptian citizens were killed in the accident. An investigation was launched into the accident, police officers said. 

Meanwhile, 2011 was the year in which the fewest number of fatal accidents took place throughout the past 11 years in Turkey. In 2011 fatal accidents decreased 5.8 percent over 2010. Nearly 120,000 traffic accidents out of 311,732 were the result of a driver’s fault. 

Most of the accidents occurred in Istanbul, followed by İzmir, Antalya and Bursa, respectively. According to official statistics, 3,821 people were killed and 237,021 were injured last year in traffic accidents.