Bus Carrying Mourners Collides With Truck in Kenya, Killing at Least 24

At least 24 people were killed when a bus carrying mourners collided with a cement truck on a major highway in southeastern Kenya. Police said the crash happened at about 7:45am on Sunday, October 25, in the Kanga area near Mtito Andei.

The crash occurred on the highway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the coastal city of Mombasa. Hospital officials said another 24 people were injured.

The bus belonged to Power of the Word Church International in Mombasa and was taking passengers home from their pastor's funeral in western Kenya.

According to one survivor, the bus had stopped for breakfast shortly before the collision. The other vehicle was a truck transporting cement.

Violet Mwandonyi, who survived the crash, told the Associated Press on Sunday that she remembered passengers crying out for passing motorists to help. She said she did not know what had happened to her two children, who had been travelling on the bus.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif, the government's senior administrator in the area, told Kenyan newspaper The Standard that the bus driver had tried to overtake several vehicles before colliding with an oncoming truck.

Kenya's National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) also identified dangerous overtaking as a possible cause. Another survivor said the truck struck the bus from behind.

The deaths came just over three weeks after another crash on the same highway. On October 3, a crash involving several vehicles killed 17 people, most of them Catholic pilgrims travelling to a prayer site, near Salama on the same highway. Police said a truck driver had tried to overtake another truck before that collision.

The NTSA had already identified that stretch of road as an area with a history of crashes. Following Sunday's collision, it called for road crashes to be declared a national disaster.

President William Ruto offered condolences on Sunday and ordered inspections of vehicles used for public transport.

Transport Minister Davis Chirchir said the government would step up enforcement against speeding and unsafe overtaking, improve dangerous sections of road and strengthen training and checks for commercial drivers. In a statement on Sunday, Chirchir said the government would work with police, local authorities and lawmakers on the measures, including closer oversight of buses and heavy goods vehicles.

"We cannot continue treating road safety as business as usual," he said, calling for stronger action to reduce deaths.

Figures from the NTSA, reported by Kenyan media, show that 5,009 people died in road crashes in 2025, with 2,150 deaths recorded in the first half of 2026. The authority estimates that about 20,000 crashes occur across Kenya each year.