A gasoline truck exploded after smashing into a bus in southeast Iran late on Thursday, killing 90 people and injuring more than 100, officials said on Friday. ‘‘The disaster is so grave we cannot identify faces and differentiate between corpses,’’ Haidar Ali Nourai, governor of Zahedan, told state television. He said the accident happened when the truck lost control and ploughed into a bus waiting at Nosratabad police checkpoint. The fireball then enveloped five other buses.Red Crescent spokesman Mehran Nourbakhsh said 90 people had died and 114 had been injured. Zahedan parliamentarian Hossein Ali Shahriari said the checkpoint was badly positioned on a sharp bend. ‘‘Inspections at this checkpoint use stone-age methods,’’ he told the ISNA student new agency. Iran has one of the highest road accident rates in the world, averaging five deaths every two hours. Nosratabad lies on the road from Zahedan to Bam. The road is dotted with checkpoints because it is the main route for drug traffickers taking opiates from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the West. —(Reuters)
