Disaster: All you need to know about the 46-dead accident in Bulgaria

The incident took place on the southwestern highway of Bulgaria's capital, Sovjes, about 2 after midnight.

The bus had North Macedonia billboards and was mainly holding tourists from the country, who were returning from Turkey, Istanbul.

Seven people had managed to escape the bus by breaking windows and then being sent to a hospital with burns in their bodies.

The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear. Bulgarian authorities said the bus had strayed from the highway and had broken 50m of the section barrier, but it was not clear whether it had done so before or after it had opened fire on it.

No other vehicle had been involved in the accident.

The village chief in the vicinity, Pernik, has told local media that the highway had been in poor shape in that section, and that there had often been accidents, reports the BBC, translates Periscopi.

Northern Macedonia Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani told reporters that travellers were returning to a secret after a break in Istanbul.

Bulgarian media said the bus had stopped at a gas station near Sofia about an hour before the accident.

Most of the victims, as Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said, had been of Macedonian citizenship, but had also been a Belgian and a Serb among them.

Mr. Zaev said that he had spoken to a survivor who had told him that the passengers had been asleep when the sound of the great explosion had occurred. /Periscope