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A truck carrying soil lost its brakes while descending a hill in the village of Neftchilar, Buloqboshi district, Andijan region, at around 9:40 a.m. on 10 October, slamming into vehicles parked at the roadside, dragging them 30 to 40 metres before overturning and destroying nearby shops. At least three people were killed, including two young children and a woman, according to reporting by Kun.uz.
The incident is the fifth of its kind on the same central street, which connects the village to a small mountain pass regularly used by heavy freight vehicles hauling sand and gravel from quarries above. Investigators found that the road’s gradient repeatedly causes brake systems on loaded trucks to fail before they reach the bottom. Over the past two years alone, at least six residents have died in similar accidents involving trucks on the same stretch, according to the report.
‘We have been asking for years’
Abdulahad Abdurasulov, a local resident, described a pattern of official promises and inaction. “Counting today, this is the fifth such terrible disaster in our village involving a truck,” he told Kun.uz. “In previous accidents, trucks came down from the hill with failed brakes, hit several homes and destroyed them. People died.”
He said authorities had pledged to lower the gradient of the pass and widen and repair the road, but nothing had been done. “It has been ages since they made those promises. There is no practical result,” he said. “Today two young children died. And a woman.”
Abdurasulov estimated the pass at no less than 100 metres in height and said a fully loaded truck of around 60 tonnes gains considerable momentum by the time it reaches the village. Quarries sit at the top of the hill, and trucks descend through the settlement to reach the main road below. He said the vehicles had previously operated only at night but had more recently begun travelling during daylight hours as well, adding to the danger for pedestrians. “There is no footpath. Everything around is destroyed,” he said.
He appealed directly to the relevant authorities to ban heavy trucks from the street and to repair the road surface, which he said had also been badly damaged by the constant freight traffic. “How many more people have to die behind these large trucks?” he asked.
A road described as overdue for demolition
Abdurasulov said the road had long been assessed as requiring full reconstruction but that funding had never been allocated. “Nobody cares about our Neftprom village,” he said, using an alternate name for the settlement. Residents had submitted multiple formal requests to the relevant agencies asking for freight traffic to be restricted on the central street and for the uneven road surface to be levelled, but received no response that produced results, according to the Kun.uz investigation.
The 10 October crash is the latest in a sequence that local residents and the available evidence suggest was foreseeable and preventable. Whether district or regional authorities will now act on the longstanding requests was not addressed in official statements available at the time of reporting.