Twelve people died when a bus carrying Polish travelers left the M3 motorway in Hungary and overturned in a roadside ditch early on August 16. Police placed the crash near Mezőkeresztes, about 140 kilometers, or 87 miles, east of Budapest. The vehicle was traveling east at roughly 1 a.m.
The passenger group was returning to Poland from a pilgrimage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to the regional government in Rzeszow. Poland’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maciej Wewiór, said everyone aboard was a Polish citizen. The bus carried Polish registration plates and the travelers came from the southeastern Podkarpackie region.
Hungary’s National Directorate for Disaster Management counted 57 passengers and two drivers in the vehicle. Several occupants were trapped beneath the bus after it rolled over. Rescue services worked at the crash site on the highway between Mezőkeresztes and Mezőnagymihaly, while the injured were taken for treatment.
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said at least 10 people had suffered serious injuries. The supplied account did not give a complete total for less severe injuries or describe the condition of each survivor. Magyar expressed sympathy to relatives of those killed and thanked the emergency personnel sent to the scene.
Police said their preliminary assessment was that the driver likely fell asleep. They took the driver into custody as the investigation proceeded. That assessment had not been presented as a final judicial finding, and no further technical cause was identified in the available account. The time of the crash, the bus’s movement off the road and its overturning were the central circumstances disclosed by investigators.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki publicly expressed sorrow and solidarity with the victims’ families. His response, together with comments from Polish diplomatic officials and the Podkarpackie regional administration, reflected the cross-border character of the emergency: the collision happened in Hungary, but all those traveling were from Poland.
The reported numbers establish both the size of the group and the gravity of the crash. Fifty-nine people were aboard, 12 were killed and at least 10 were described as seriously hurt. Officials had not released the victims’ names in the supplied evidence. The investigation therefore remained focused on how the bus came to leave the motorway and whether the preliminary view about driver fatigue would be confirmed.
No collision with another vehicle was reported. The bus’s path from the eastbound carriageway into a ditch, followed by its rollover, defined the known sequence. Officials also did not state how long the pilgrimage group had been traveling before the crash. Those gaps limited conclusions beyond the police’s early fatigue assessment.
