At least 90 people died in southeastern Iran when a fuel truck lost control and crashed into a bus at a police post, with the explosion engulfing other trucks, cars and buses.

Officials said the toll could rise as high as 200 killed, as rescue workers scoured charred buses, cars and lorries in the gruesome task of collecting frazzled body parts.

It took more than 24 hours for the news to be broadcast with initial reports setting the death toll at seventy dead and over eighty injured.

The tanker truck crashed into public buses stopped on the main road between Bam and Zahedan, 690 miles southeast of the capital Tehran. The tanker was carrying more than 4,500 gallons of gas.

The fireball then enveloped six buses and five other trucks, two of which were carrying tar, causing a massive conflagration.

The cause of the fuel tanker crash is yet to be determined, although one possibility was that the driver lost control of his truck on a steep road approaching the police post.

The roads around Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, are dotted with police checkpoints, mostly there to check for drugs.

Sistan-Baluchestan is situated on the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and serves as a major transit point for narcotics being smuggled into Iran and to Europe.

Nosratabad lies on the road from Zahedan to Bam, which was hit in December by massive quake that killed an estimated 26,000 people. Bam's ancient citadel, a world architectural heritage site, was leveled by the tremor.

Around 200 people were killed and hundreds injured Wednesday, February 18, when runaway rail wagons loaded with an explosive cocktail of sulphur, petrol and fertilizer derailed and blew up in northeast Iran.

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