Pakistan flies home injured and bodies of 28 Shiite pilgrims killed in a bus crash in Iran

Pakistan on Friday brought home the bodies of 28 Shiite pilgrims killed in a bus crash in Iran this week while on their way to a pilgrimage to Iraq. A Pakistani military plane also flew back 23 pilgrims injured in the accident, officials said.

Iranian authorities had previously handed over the bodies of the crash victims to Pakistani diplomats. Prayer services were held first in Iran and later in Pakistan.

The funerals were scheduled to take place early Saturday in the victims' home districts. The pilgrims were from the southern Pakistani province of Sindh, said Nasir Shah, a spokesman for the provincial government.

The plane requested by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for the repatriation landed at the airport in Jacobabad, about 625 miles southwest of the capital Islamabad. The coffins, draped with the Pakistani national flag, were handed over to the victims' relatives for burial.

State broadcaster PTV broadcast the ceremony at Jacobabad airport, where relatives of the victims cried and hugged each other.

Authorities have not provided any information about the cause of the crash near the city of Taft, about 500 kilometers southeast of Tehran.

In a report on state television, Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local Iranian disaster management official, attributed the accident to the bus's brakes failing and the driver's lack of attention. Surveillance video broadcast by state television showed the bus speeding past a parked car and entering a dirt parking lot shortly before the accident, narrowly missing pedestrians.

Iran has one of the world's worst road safety records, with around 17,000 people dying each year. The high death toll is attributed to widespread disregard for traffic rules, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services in the vast rural areas.

The pilgrims were on their way to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq to celebrate the festival of Arba'een – the Arabic word for 40 – which marks the end of the annual 40-day mourning period following the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the 7th century and a central figure in Shiite Islam.

Hussein died at the hands of Muslim Umayyad forces at the Battle of Karbala in the turbulent first century of Islamic history.

Ahmed writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.