BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A multiple-vehicle crash in northeast Romania on Tuesday morning left seven people dead, police said.

The collision occurred on a national road in Iasi County and involved an ambulance, a truck and a van, police said. Three people were hospitalized in stable condition.

Video footage posted online showed emergency service personnel at the scene along with mangled and overturned vehicles. Large chunks of vehicle body panels from one of the vehicles were strewn across the roadside. Police said that the exact cause of the crash was under investigation, but an initial explanation of what happened has emerged.

"A truck headed in the opposite direction, collided with an ambulance and then collided head-on with a van,” the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations Iasi wrote online Tuesday, and urged people to drive safely.

“Attention should be on the road, not on the cell phone!" the inspectorate’s post added. “Remember that you are not the only person on the road, and the roads do not belong to you!”

Romania, a European Union country of around 19.5 million people, had the bloc's highest road fatality rate in 2019 with 96 deaths per million inhabitants compared to a bloc average of 51 per million, according to data from Eurostat.