At least 12 persons including a three-year-old girl and her mother died in two separate accidents in Accra and Abofour near Offinso in the Ashanti Region.

The three-year-old girl and her mother died on the spot while seven others sustained various degrees of injury when a double-axel truck loaded with sand veered off its lane and hit a Kpando-bound passenger vehicle at Frafraha, near Adenta in the Greater Accra Region.

Stephen Ahiatafu, the Adenta District Police Commander, and some MTTU officers who were at the scene of the accident, told DAILY GUIDE that the accident occurred around 12:30pm yesterday.

The Mercedes Benz truck with registration number GR 9042 Z and driven by Kofi Benjamin, 36, was heading towards Adenta from Dodowa with sand.

Upon reaching Frafraha, according to Benjamin, a taxi crossed him, making him lose control of the steering wheel.

The driver of the 12-seater Hyundai H00 bus, with registration number GR 2866-11, saw the action and stopped to avoid a collision.

However, the tipper truck veered off its lane into the lane of the oncoming vehicles and landed on the Hyundai bus.

The dead were all occupants of the Hyundai bus.

The driver of the tipper truck, on the other hand, sustained some head injuries.

Five of the injured were rushed to Mother Love Clinic, Adenta for medical attention, while the drivers of both vehicles, whose conditions were critical, were rushed to the 37 Military Hospital for intensive medical attention.

The remains of the dead, some of whom had their heads and various parts of their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, were sent to the Police Hospital morgue for autopsy.

It took more than three hours for police personnel to clear the heavy traffic that had built up.

8 Die At Abofour Accident

In the Kumasi incident, eight persons died on the Abofour stretch of the Kumasi-Techiman highway near Offinso on Wednesday.

Five people died on the spot and three more died at the hospital. Several human parts got strewn at the accident scene as most of the victims got trapped under the truck.

ACP Emmanuel Amissah, the Offinso Divisional Police Commander, confirmed the story yesterday and said that the surviving victims were receiving treatment at the St Patrick Hospital in Offinso.

Earlier reports had put the death toll at five after an articulated truck loaded with sacks of maize ran into a Tata cargo truck loaded with non-alcoholic beverages on the Kumasi-Techiman road.

The police could neither give the names of the deceased nor the surviving victims but confirmed that the dead included two minors, four males and two females, most of whom were residents of Abofour.

However, Daily Guide learnt that some of the victims were identified as Akua Sika, trader, who was said to be in her 50s, Maa Afia and little Matilda Desmond.

The brakes of the articulated truck allegedly failed the driver on reaching the Abofour Township and hit the Tata bus with registration number GE 4904 Y, which was coming from the opposite direction, resulting in the accident.

Eyewitnesses told Daily Guide that after the maize-laden truck had hit the Tata bus, three other vehicles, a taxicab, a Mercedes Benz sprinter bus and an LT mini bus with registration numbers AS 3566 – 10, AS 9058 – 11 and AS 1935 – 09 respectively, also got crashed in the process.

They said the articulated truck and the sprinter eventually ran into a grocery shop and a mechanic shop, trapping several people underneath.