Seventeen people were seriously injured early on Sunday when a bus carrying mourners from Kisumu crashed at Migaa on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway, a stretch of road near Sachangwan with a long history of fatal accidents.

The Kenya Red Cross Society confirmed the crash in a statement, saying a vehicle carrying mourners from Kisumu had crashed at Migaa, injuring 17 people. According to preliminary reports cited by Citizen Digital and Kenyans.co.ke, the accident happened at around 12:30 am on Sunday, October 18, less than a kilometre from Sachangwan Centre in Molo Sub-County, Nakuru County.

Kenyans.co.ke described the vehicle as a 60-seater bus. The outlet reported that the injured were rushed to the Nakuru County Referral and Teaching Hospital for treatment. The condition of individual patients had not been made public by Sunday morning.

Passenger trapped for more than an hour

Rescuers faced a difficult night operation. In a social media update, the Red Cross said one casualty was “extricated after being trapped for over an hour,” Citizen Digital reported. The rescue was a joint effort involving the Kenya Red Cross Nakuru Branch, police officers, ambulance teams from Molo and residents who rushed to the scene to help pull passengers from the wreckage.

By daybreak the debris had been cleared and the Red Cross reported that traffic on the busy highway was “now flowing normally.” The humanitarian organisation urged motorists to drive carefully and observe road safety rules.

The cause of the crash had not been established at the time of publication, and there was no immediate account of whether another vehicle was involved. People Daily reported that police had opened investigations into the incident.

There was also some variation in reported timing: a Red Cross statement quoted by People Daily was dated Saturday, October 17, while other outlets placed the accident shortly after midnight going into Sunday. The difference is consistent with a crash late on Saturday night that was reported in the early hours of Sunday.

A notorious stretch of road

The Nakuru-Eldoret highway is one of the busiest transport corridors in the country, linking the port of Mombasa and Nairobi to western Kenya, Uganda and beyond. It carries heavy volumes of long-distance trucks, buses and matatus, and its winding, hilly sections around Sachangwan, Migaa and Salgaa have repeatedly been listed among Kenya's deadliest black spots.

Sachangwan is remembered nationally for the 2009 fuel tanker explosion that killed more than 100 people, and the area has since recorded numerous serious crashes. Only weeks ago, in September, five people died and eight were seriously injured when a speeding matatu rammed into a stationary trailer at the Twin Bridges black spot on the same highway, with police blaming speed and poor weather, Kenyans.co.ke reported.

Sunday's accident also came during a grim weekend on Kenyan roads. On Friday night, four people were killed and 21 injured in a head-on collision between two matatus on the Katito-Kendu Bay road in Homa Bay County, while a long-distance bus collided with a sand lorry on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway the same day, though passengers in that crash escaped with minor injuries.

Mourners on the move

Funeral travel is a common feature of Kenyan weekends, with relatives and friends often hiring buses to travel long distances to burials and back, sometimes overnight. Road safety officials have in the past cautioned against night travel, overloading and fatigue among drivers ferrying large groups, particularly on long routes through the Rift Valley.

The National Transport and Safety Authority has repeatedly called on motorists to slow down on the Nakuru-Eldoret road, which combines steep gradients, sharp bends and heavy freight traffic, especially at night and in wet or foggy conditions.

Police are expected to establish what caused the bus to crash and to release an update on the condition of those admitted in hospital. Families seeking information on passengers have been advised to contact the Nakuru County Referral and Teaching Hospital or the Kenya Red Cross.

Photos: A section of highway in the Rift Valley (Mikenjau, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0); a Kenyan ambulance (Cpl Jeff Sisto, U.S. Marine Corps, Wikimedia Commons, public domain). Illustrative composite.