Truck carrying Afghan returnees overturns, killing at least 22 in east Afghanistan

A truck carrying Afghan returnees from Pakistan overturned on a highway in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 22 people and injuring about 36 others, most of them women and children. The crash turned a movement back home into a mass-casualty scene, with wounded passengers rushed to hospitals in Nangarhar province.

The vehicle flipped on May 30 on the Kabul-to-Nangarhar highway in Laghman province, later identified as Qarghayi district. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the truck was carrying recently returned Afghan families from Pakistan, underscoring how deportation pressure and cross-border return flows are pushing vulnerable people onto overcrowded transport and into unsafe travel conditions.

The deadliest toll fell on families already uprooted by years of displacement. Humanitarian reporting says many of those returning from Pakistan had lived there for years, and some were born there, meaning the journey back to Afghanistan is not a simple homecoming but a forced upheaval for people with few assets and little protection. The crash exposed the risks they face once they are moved onto roads that remain among the most dangerous in the region.

The scale of return has been enormous. UNHCR says Afghanistan experienced an estimated 2.9 million Afghan returns in 2025, and nearly 150,000 Afghans had returned from Iran and Pakistan so far in 2026. Pakistan still hosted 851,153 registered Afghan refugees as of April 30, 2026, according to UNHCR data. The agency said Afghanistan’s operational environment remained volatile in April amid continued returns from Iran and Pakistan, cross-border tensions, flooding and movement restrictions.

That backdrop matters because Afghanistan’s roads are chronically unsafe. Traffic accidents are common because of poor roads, dangerous driving and weak regulation, conditions that magnify every overloaded truck, every long-distance transfer and every hurried departure. In Laghman, those systemic failures met the human cost of forced return in a single overturned vehicle, leaving families shattered before they had a chance to resettle.