At least 46 people have been killed in a major road accident involving multiple vehicles on the highway between Uganda’s capital Kampala and the northern city of Gulu, police have said.
The collision took place just after midnight [21:00 GMT on Tuesday] near the town of Kiryandongo, some 263km (163 miles) from Kampala, and was caused by two buses coming from opposite directions trying to overtake a truck and a car.
Police initially said 63 people had been killed in the accident before revising the death toll.
“In the process, both buses met head-on during the overtaking manoeuvres,” the Uganda Police Force said in a statement on X.
The police added that “as investigations continue, we strongly urge all motorists to exercise maximum caution on the roads, especially avoiding dangerous and careless overtaking, which remains one of the leading causes of crashes in the country”.
In a later statement, police said they had initially overestimated the number of victims during early rescue efforts.
“At the time of the crash, several victims were found unconscious, and some may have been mistakenly included in the initial fatality count,” it said.
The Kampala-Gulu Highway is one of Uganda’s busiest as it connects the capital with the biggest town in northern Uganda.
The death toll in the latest crash is uncommonly high, said Irene Nakasiita, a Red Cross spokesperson who described victims left bleeding with broken limbs.
She said the images from the scene were too gruesome to share, adding that “the magnitude of this incident is so big”.
In Uganda, 5,144 people were killed in road crashes in 2024, according to police figures. That number rose from 4,806 in 2023 and 4,534 in 2022.
