RASHT, Gilan Province Five family members, including an 11-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter, were killed on Monday on the road from Fouman to Rasht in northern Iran, the provincial traffic police announced on Tuesday.
The fatal accident occurred when the Paykan vehicle carrying the family collided with a trailer truck and a minibus.
"An occupant of the minibus who was severely injured was transferred to a hospital in Rasht," Khodadad Qanbarzadeh, an official with the traffic police said. The fate of the victim has not been reported.
Qanbarzaded said the collision took place when the truck swerved from its path.
He noted that such accidents are often due to driver fatigue or attempts to overtake preceding vehicles, overspeeding, technical flaws in vehicles, non-standard roads, or a "disregard of precautionary signs and blind points".
In June, the same official divulged that in Gilan some 1,633 people have died or received injuries in road accidents since March 20 of this year.
The director general of Gilan's Road and Transportation Service said: "Gilan is a transit point for vehicles transporting goods to the Central Asian republics and roads connecting various points crisscross the province.
"A record 30,000 vehicles travel on the roads of in this province every day and annually 4 million people travel to and from Gilan Province." Statistics indicate that road accidents in Iran have been on the rise in recent years due mainly to a disregard of traffic laws by drivers.
A recent survey revealed that 200,000 accidents take place every year on Iran's highways resulting in the death of 15,000 people.
(IRNA)