Editor’s note: The original version of this article, published on this site by its previous operator in August 2025, was lost. UC Sports Nation rebuilt it in October 2026 from official statements and news reports, and updated it with the court cases that followed.
A passenger bus skidded off a bridge and fell into the Oued El Harrach river in Algiers on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, killing 18 people. More than 20 others were injured, and President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared a day of national mourning.
The bus was running between Réghaïa, east of the capital, and central Algiers, the Algerian news site TSA reported. The crash happened in the Mohammadia district of eastern Algiers, Agence France-Presse reported. The public prosecutor later put the time at about 5:40 p.m.
Most of the official statements cited below were issued in French. UC Sports Nation translated them.
Why the first reports said nine injured
The death toll held at 18 in every official count we found. The number of injured did not. On the evening of the crash, Civil Protection Cmdr. Nassim Bernaoui told the state news agency APS that the toll had risen to 18 dead and nine injured. That figure was widely reported and appeared in the original headline of this article.
Later counts were higher:
| Who gave the count | Reported by | Dead | Injured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Civil Protection (Cmdr. Nassim Bernaoui), Aug. 15 | APS | 18 | 9, two critical |
| Civil Protection, later bulletin | TSA | 18 | 23, two serious |
| Civil Protection, overnight Aug. 15-16 | TSA | 18 | 24 |
| Dar El Beïda prosecutor, Aug. 19 | TSA | 18, four of them women | 25 |
The prosecutor said there were 43 passengers on the bus, according to TSA.
Passersby went into the water before firefighters arrived
Survivors and witnesses described the scene to TSA. The outlet reported that a group of friends jumped into the river to rescue survivors before firefighters reached the bus. TSA also quoted the driver as saying the steering had locked and the bus was overloaded.
Bernaoui told APS that two critically injured passengers were treated at the scene before being taken to the local hospital, and that the bodies were taken to the same hospital’s morgue.
A national day of mourning
Tebboune declared one day of national mourning, with flags flown at half-staff, and offered condolences to the victims’ families.
Victims were buried on Saturday, Aug. 16, at El Alia cemetery in Algiers, with Prime Minister Nadir Larbaoui attending, APS reported. Three victims were buried that afternoon in Biskra, according to a separate APS report.
What the prosecutor found
On Tuesday, Aug. 19, the public prosecutor at the Dar El Beïda court in Algiers said four people had been placed in pretrial detention after questioning by an investigating judge: the driver, the conductor, the technical inspector and the bus owner, TSA reported. According to TSA’s account of the prosecutor’s statement:
- Surveillance video showed the bus was full of passengers, which the prosecutor said was the responsibility of the driver and the conductor.
- The bus was not authorized to operate, following a decision by the Algiers transport directorate.
- An expert report found the direct cause was the bus’s steering locking because of a failure in a steering ball joint. The overload made the failure worse and the bus harder to control.
- The bus was poorly maintained and its braking system was weak. The handbrake did not work, which prevented an emergency stop.
- The bus’s technical inspection had recorded no failure or mechanical problem, which the prosecutor said made the inspector responsible.
The prosecutor also said the driver drove the bus illegally on Fridays as a side job and was not insured, TSA reported.
Four convicted, and the verdicts upheld on appeal
In late March 2026, the Dar El Beïda court convicted all four defendants, TSA reported:
- Bus owner: five years in prison and a 200,000-dinar fine. The court also ordered the passenger transport company closed for two years.
- Driver: four years in prison and a 100,000-dinar fine.
- Technical inspector: four years in prison and a 100,000-dinar fine.
- Conductor: two years, one of them suspended, and a 500,000-dinar fine.
The owner, driver and conductor were prosecuted for involuntary homicide, unintentional injuries and endangering the lives of others. The inspector’s charges included issuing a certificate containing false information.
On Wednesday, July 22, 2026, the criminal chamber of the Algiers court upheld the convictions of all four, despite the prosecution’s request for heavier sentences, Algerie360 reported. Its account gives the driver five years and the inspector a 500,000-dinar fine, figures that differ from TSA’s report of the trial verdict. UC Sports Nation could not obtain the rulings to settle the difference.
Separately, on May 3, 2026, Tebboune ordered that buses more than 25 years old be withdrawn from the national fleet within three months, APS reported. That report did not mention the Oued El Harrach crash.
Top image: Illustrative image: Parc de Bentalha along the Oued El Harrach east of Algiers, 2024 (file photo, not the crash site). Photo: Zodexarion5, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons