• Three firefighters, four emergency medical personnel and two drone operators are among the dead.
• They were attending an earlier accident on a highway near the city of Gaziantep.
• Turkey has a poor track record when it comes to road safety.

Sixteen people were killed on Saturday in southeast Turkey when a bus collided with emergency workers and journalists who were attending an earlier accident on a highway near the city of Gaziantep, according to local authorities.

Three firefighters, four emergency medical personnel, and two drone operators from a Turkish news agency were among those killed, according to regional governor Davut Gul.

“At around 10:45 this morning, a passenger bus crashed here,” Gul said, speaking from the scene of the accident on the road east of Gaziantep.

“While the fire brigade, medical teams and other colleagues were responding to the accident, another bus crashed 200 metres behind. The second bus slid to this site and hit the first responders and the wounded people on the ground.”

Vice President Fuat Oktay stated that the emergency workers and journalists had “died in the line of duty.”

Turkey has a poor track record when it comes to road safety. According to the government, 5,362 people were killed in traffic accidents last year.

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