GHAZNI, Afghanistan - Around 50 people were killed and scores were injured in Afghanistan when two buses collided with a fuel tanker on a highway in the central province of Ghazni, causing a massive explosion, officials said on Sunday.

Jawid Salangi, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni said two buses, carrying some 125 passengers from Kabul to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan crashed into the tanker, which was travelling in the opposite direction, setting off a fire that quickly engulfed all three vehicles.

He said Afghan army units were rushed to the scene of the accident in Moqor district and managed to save some passengers but many of the injured were in a critical condition. Fifty people were killed and 73 injured, he said.

Even by the standards of Afghanistan's notoriously dangerous highways, the accident was a huge one, but there was no indication that it was caused by anything other than a road crash.

Photographs from the scene posted on social media sites, showed columns of thick black smoke rising into the air over the burned out wreckage of the buses.