Morocco top-flight footballers in head-on bus crash

The damaged bus of Chabab Atlas Khenifra football team after it was involved in a head-on collision with a van as it travelled to the city of Khenifra on April 20, 2015. By STR (AFP)

Rabat (AFP) - Players from a top-flight Moroccan football club were among 29 people injured, many of them badly, when their bus collided head-on with a van on Monday, reports said.

The accident comes 10 days after 34 people were killed in one of the North African country's worst road accidents when a bus slammed into a trailer truck.

Monday's crash occurred before dawn, when the bus driver lost control of the vehicle before it crashed into the oncoming van, the authorities said.

Twenty-nine people were injured in the accident near the central town of Khenfira, with 12 of them hospitalised in Khenfira and Fez, they said.

The bus had been transporting players from the Khenfira football club after a match on Sunday at Al Hoceima on the Mediterranean coast, according to the MAP news agency.

Khenfira currently sits in 14th place in Morocco's top-flight football league, one point ahead of Al Hoceima in the relegation zone.

The authorities did not say whether footballers were among those hurt, but the local Economist daily cited the club president as saying that many had been seriously injured.

News of Monday's crash comes with Morocco still mourning the loss of Al Hoceima forward Nabil Oumghar, 27, who died last week from injuries suffered when his vehicle ran off the road two months ago.

On April 10, 34 people were killed, mostly Moroccan schoolchildren returning from a sporting event, when their bus caught fire after smashing head-on into a trailer truck.