Eleven killed and 30 injured in coach crash near Manisa, governor says

Eleven people were killed and 30 injured, up from an initial count of 27, when a tour coach collided with a tow truck and overturned near the Akhisar toll gates on the Gebze-Orhangazi-İzmir motorway in Türkiye's Manisa province on Sunday 11 October, according to the Manisa governor's office. The governor said the coach was travelling from Bursa towards İzmir. The first report reached authorities at about 11:11 local time, 09:11 in London.

The provincial governor's office said rescue and medical teams were sent to the site and the injured were transferred to hospitals in the surrounding area. Photographs and aerial footage showed the bus overturned on its side across the motorway's safety barriers, with its windscreen smashed, the Daily Mirror reported. Manisa governor Vahdettin Özkan, who travelled to the scene, said at least one of the injured was in serious condition.

Türkiye's interior minister, Mustafa Ciftci, said emergency response teams from the disaster management agency AFAD, police, gendarmerie, the fire service and medical teams were dispatched to the scene. He expressed condolences to victims' families, referring to those killed as "our citizens", and said the relevant agencies were closely monitoring the situation in coordination with each other.

Early reports on Sunday morning described "many dead and injured" before the governor's office confirmed the official toll of 11 dead; the number of injured was later revised upward, from 27 to 30, as hospitals continued treating the wounded through the day.

The cause of the collision has not been established, and Turkish authorities have opened an investigation into the exact circumstances, Kathimerini reported. The nationalities of those killed and injured have not been confirmed, according to the Daily Mirror.