Iran bus crash kills 30

TEHRAN, Iran -- A head-on collision between a bus and a truck in southern Iran has killed 30 people, the official IRNA news agency said.

The agency reported that among the dead were a number of hardline Islamic Basiji militiamen.

Earlier, Tehran radio and Iranian TV had reported that at least 20 had died and more than 20 others were injured in the crash, some of them critically.

IRNA said the collision occurred on the road between Kerman and Sirjan on Friday as the Basiji volunteers were returning from a museum visit.

A hardline conservative former MP, Ali Movahedi Savoji, was also killed on Friday in an unrelated car crash, IRNA said.

Iran's record on road safety is one of the worst in the world. Last year about 17,000 people were killed in road accidents on Iranian roads and 87,000 injured.

Official statistics show that Iranian road accidents kill one person every 40 minutes and injure a person every seven minutes.