Jakarta, September 23: More than 300 people have been killed in road accidents in Indonesia during a mass exodus to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a police spokesman said Wednesday.
“The latest number of road accidents nationwide is 893, in which 312 people were killed,” national police spokesman I Ketut Untung Yoga Ana told AFP, using data collected since September 13.
“Most of those killed were riding motorcycles,” he said.
More than 27 million people left major cities and towns across the archipelago to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Yoga Ana said that the number of people killed was expected to increase as millions of people returned to big cities this week after Eid holidays.
Transport ministry figures show that the number of travellers driving motorcycles home for Eid is increasing every year.
Data shows that most of the people killed on Indonesian roads last year were riding motorcycles. At least 548 died in the exodus.
Police said they had sent 120,000 officers to monitor major travel routes throughout the country.
The number of passengers expected to head home is nearly nine percent higher than last year’s figure of 25.63 million, according to the ministry.
It said that 16.25 million people will use planes, trains and ferries, while 11 million will travel home by car and motorcycle.
Around 90 percent of Indonesia’s 234 million people are Muslim, but the country also has sizeable Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Confucian minorities.
—Agencies