Baghdad, Jun 22 (IANS): Six people were killed in a car accident when a sedan collided with a fuel tanker on a road northwest of Baghdad, a traffic police official said.

Provincial traffic police officer Mahmoud al-Bakri told Xinhua news agency that the incident occurred on Friday when a sedan car carrying five people collided with a tanker on a desert road between the provinces of Salahudin and Anbar, causing a fire.

A civil defence team arrived at the scene to put out the fire while ambulances evacuated the victims to the hospital, al-Bakri said.

Meanwhile, a source from the hospital in the city of Samarra told Xinhua that the hospital received six burned bodies, out of which five belonged to the small car, and another one was the tanker driver.

More than 7,000 traffic accidents occurred in Iraq in 2023, mainly due to deteriorating road conditions, inadequate traffic signals and safety barriers, as well as negligence of traffic rules, according to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights.