At least 36 students from a teacher training college burnt to death early on Monday near the southern Zimbabwean city of Masvingo after their bus collided with a truck, police said.
Thirty-five other students who survived the accident are in hospital in the town and some of them are in critical condition.
The bus carrying the students was returning from a sports tournament in Harare to Masvingo, about 240km south of the capital, when it collided at around midnight (1000 GMT) with a truck laden with bags of maize.
”Heaps of bags of maize fell on the bus and caught fire. Both the truck and the bus were burnt,” police Inspector Andrew Phiri told AFP.
A police representative in Masvingo said the hospital was coping with the number of injured and its morgue had been able to accommodate all the bodies.
He said all the bodies had been removed from the wreckage.
The students in the bus, most of them in their 20s, were all from Masvingo Teacher Training College.
The college head did not give details when contacted for comment by AFP, but said lectures had been suspended following the tragedy.
”The students are just seated and they are mourning (their colleagues),” said the principal, who declined to give his name.- Sapa-AFP