Four people are feared dead after two trucks collided head-on and burst into flames at Kiunduani in Makindu, Makueni County, along the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway on Sunday, 8 November.

The victims, reported to include the drivers of both trucks, a woman and a child, were trapped inside the wreckage as the vehicles caught fire following the collision. They are said to have suffered severe burns, leaving them with little chance of escape.

An incident alert issued by Armistice Security Consult International at about 2.30pm reported the crash and the fire at the scene. Footage circulating from the scene showed the two trucks engulfed in flames as passersby tried to put out the fire, while motorists formed long queues and some were forced to use the road shoulder to get past the wreckage.

Police had not issued an official statement confirming the reported death toll by the time of publication, and investigations were under way to establish what caused the collision. It was also unclear whether the fire had been fully extinguished, and emergency responders were not visible in footage captured in the initial moments after the crash.

The crash is the latest in a series of deadly accidents on the 461-kilometre Nairobi-Mombasa Highway, where more than 40 people have reportedly died since September. The worst of the recent tragedies was the collision at Kanga near Mtito Andei on 25 October, in which a church bus and a lorry crashed, killing 24 people, four of them after being admitted to hospital. A crash at Salama on 3 October left 17 people dead, while accidents at Kapiti on 16 September and Taru on 23 September claimed five and two lives respectively.

Figures from the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) show that 3,995 people died in road crashes in Kenya between 1 January and 4 October 2026, about 14 deaths a day and a 9.2 per cent rise on the 3,657 deaths recorded over the same period in 2025. The same period also saw more than 9,000 serious injuries and over 6,000 slight injuries, with pedestrians and motorcyclists accounting for a large share of the deaths.

Government spokesperson Charles Owino has painted an even grimmer picture, saying Kenya had recorded 9,002 road deaths so far in 2026. Speaking after the Salama tragedy, he blamed the toll partly on indiscipline, impunity, poor compliance with traffic laws and inadequate enforcement.

The NTSA has identified poor road infrastructure, driver behaviour and vehicle conditions among the main factors behind the crashes, and has listed more than 270 road crash black spots across the country, 199 of them along the Mombasa-Malaba Northern Corridor. Its director of road safety, Andrew Kipalgat, has said investigations into accidents must examine vehicle condition, road design, driver conduct and the emergency response, and has argued that dual carriageways could help prevent head-on collisions of the kind seen at Kiunduani.