At least 66 people died when a bus and a truck collided and caught fire in Burkina Faso in one of West Africa's worst road accidents, the country's transport minister said.
"We lament 96 victims, of whom 66 have died," Gilbert Noel Ouedraogo said. "Of the 66, 55 bodies were completely charred. There are 30 injured admitted in hospital."
He said that there were Ivorian nationals aboard the bus, which was registered in Ivory Coast and owned by an Ivorian company Ba Issa Transport.
"For the nationalies of the victims, it is difficult to say. There are Ivorians, there are Burkinabes. But we have only been able to identify 10 people. With the 55 charred bodies identifcation is very difficult."
Early indications suggested that the driver of the truck might have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Earlier court prosecutor Maiza Compaore told AFP by telephone from the site of the accident near Boromo, 167km west of the capital Ouagadougou, that the two vehicles caught fire.
"The scene is gruesome ... there are bodies on the road, some are in the wreckage, there are charred bodies which are still being removed. It's really horrible."
The impact of the crash had forced the bus off the road. All that remained of the two vehicles were burnt-out shells.
Compaore said the bus driver, who was carrying a passenger list, had survived but was still too shocked to be questioned by police.
The bus and the truck carrying sugar had collided around 5:30am 6km from Boromo, Compaore had said.
The bus was headed for the Ivorian port of San Pedro in southwest Ivory Coast, a cocoa-producing region where many Burkinabes work, according to Ouedraogo.
Individual graves were dug about 12m from the roadside and bodies taken there by local villagers and relatives.
A young man of 26 dug out of the earth a badly burned body.
"It is my brother, it is my brother," he said.
"He was going to San Pedro. He called me this morning to say he was going to see relatives there."
Boromo, a town with a population of 19,000, is the capital of Bale province.
Burkina Faso's minister for social action, Pascaline Tamini, expressing profound sadness, offered the condolences of President Blaise Compaore, Prime Minister Tertius Zongo and the government.
Roads in West African countries are notoriously dangerous, especially at night.
In May 46 Nigerian soldiers returning from an African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Sudan, were killed in a collision between a petrol tanker and an army convoy.
In March 2007 in Guinea 70 people travelling in the back of a truck were killed when the vehicle overturned while crossing a narrow wooden bridge.