At least 28 killed as bus plunges into ravine in Ethiopia

A public bus carrying 64 people plunged into a ravine in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, killing at least 28 passengers and injuring 33 others as it traveled from Dessie toward Addis Ababa. The vehicle lost control and dropped into a ravine about 100 meters deep, turning a routine intercity trip into one of the country’s latest major road disasters.

Rescue crews and police were still accounting for passengers after the crash, and the death toll later climbed to 31. The scale of the wreck drew immediate attention not just because of the number of dead, but because it exposed how vulnerable travel remains on major roads in Ethiopia, where steep terrain, overloaded vehicles and weak maintenance can turn a single breakdown in judgment or machinery into a mass-casualty event.

The crash also pointed to deeper problems along the Dessie-to-Addis Ababa corridor and across the country’s transport network. Road accidents are common in Ethiopia, where driving standards are often poor and many vehicles are badly maintained. In that setting, questions about speed, weather, road design and mechanical failure are never far from the scene after a bus goes off the road, especially on mountain routes where a small error can become fatal.

The Amhara disaster followed another major roadway tragedy in December 2024, when at least 71 people died in Ethiopia’s southern Sidama region after a truck returning from a wedding missed a bridge and fell into the Ganale Doria River in Bona district. Several more people were injured in that crash, and some were treated at nearby hospitals. Together, the two accidents show that Ethiopia’s road-safety crisis is not isolated to one region or one kind of vehicle.

Amhara has seen similar devastation before. In March 2018, at least 38 people, mostly students, were killed when a bus plunged into a ravine in the same region, and 10 people survived. That earlier crash, like the one on Sunday, underscored how quickly a mountainous road can become a site of collective grief when vehicles fail, roads are unforgiving and emergency response is stretched.

For families in Amhara, the immediate work is grim and practical: identifying the dead, treating the injured and piecing together how a bus on a major route ended up in a deep ravine. For Ethiopia more broadly, the accident is another warning that the country’s road death toll reflects structural failures in safety, enforcement and maintenance, not just isolated accidents.