At least 45 people have been pronounced dead after a bus crashed and caught fire in western Bulgaria, the nation's interior ministry has said.
Per BBC News, at least 12 children are among the 45 casualties, making it the most deadly bus accident in the Balkan country's history.
Interim Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov said bodies were "clustered inside and are burnt to ash", The Guardian reports.
"The picture is terrifying, terrifying. I have never seen anything like that before," he told reporters at the site.
The cause of the accident was unclear but the bus appeared to have hit a highway barrier either before or after it caught fire, Bulgarian officials said.
The coach party had been returning to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, after a weekend holiday trip to Istanbul, a trip of about 500 miles.
They were on their way back to Skopje, the capital, after a weekend holiday trip to Istanbul in Turkey, said North Macedonian foreign minister Bujar Osman.
"Human error by the driver or a technical malfunction are the two initial versions for the accident," Sarafov said.
Video footage showed the bus standing upright but charred and gutted by fire in the middle of the highway, which was wet from rainfall.
"This is a huge tragedy," North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told reporters in Sofia and expressed his condolences to relatives of the victims.
The country's president, Stevo Pendarovski, called it a "horrific accident" and said that he expects the authorities to conduct a full investigation.
He said he had spoken to one of the survivors who told him passengers were sleeping when they were woken by the sound of an explosion.
A hospital official said the survivors - two women and five men - receiving treatment were all in a stable condition, and one had a broken leg. Bulgarian interim prime minister Stefan Yanev visited the crash site and described the incident as "a huge tragedy".
"I take this opportunity to send my condolences to the relatives of the victims," he said. "Let's hope we learn lessons from this tragic incident and we can prevent such incidents in the future."
