Sixteen people were killed in southeast Turkey on Saturday when a bus crashed into emergency workers and journalists who were attending an earlier accident on a highway near the city of Gaziantep, local authorities said.

Regional governor Davut Gul said the dead included three firefighters, four emergency health workers and two drone operators from a Turkish news agency.

“At around 10:45 this morning, a passenger bus crashed here,” Gul said, speaking from the scene of the accident on the road east of Gaziantep.

“While the fire brigade, medical teams and other colleagues were responding to the accident, another bus crashed 200 metres behind. The second bus slid to this site and hit the first responders and the wounded people on the ground.”

Vice President Fuat Oktay said the emergency workers and journalists had “lost their lives in the line of duty”.