Madar (Nairobi) - At least 24 people were killed on Sunday morning, October 25, 2026, when a bus carrying mourners collided with a truck transporting cement on the highway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the coastal city of Mombasa in south-eastern Kenya, police said, Al Jazeera English reported, citing the Associated Press.
The crash happened at about 7:45am local time (04:45 GMT) in the Kanga area near Mtito Andei and also injured 24 people, hospital officials said. The bus belonged to a church in Mombasa and was taking passengers home from their pastor's funeral in western Kenya.
The cause of the crash is under investigation. Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif told Kenyan newspaper The Standard that the bus driver had tried to overtake several vehicles before colliding with an oncoming truck. The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) also identified dangerous overtaking as a possible cause, while one survivor said the truck struck the bus from behind.
President William Ruto offered condolences and ordered inspections of public transport vehicles. Transport Minister Davis Chirchir pledged tougher enforcement against speeding and unsafe overtaking, improvements to dangerous sections of road and stronger training and checks for commercial drivers, saying: "We cannot continue treating road safety as business as usual."
The crash came just over three weeks after another collision on the same highway, near Salama, killed 17 people on October 3. According to NTSA figures reported by Kenyan media, 5,009 people died in road crashes in 2025 and 2,150 in the first half of 2026. The authority has called for road crashes to be declared a national disaster.
