At least 24 people, including women and children, were killed when a bus carrying them fell in a ditch in northwest Pakistan, police said. The incident occurred when the bus, carrying 35 passengers, was going to Kandia from Bagru of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“All 24 people belonging to the same tribe drowned when a bridge collapsed and the jeep they were travelling in plunged into a stream,” Ahsanul Haq, the chief civil defence warden said.
It was learnt that all the passengers belonged to the same family and were en route to attend a function.
The cause of the accident was being investigated.
District police chief of Upper Kohistan Raja Abdul Saboor said: “The police and rescue teams rushed to the spot to retrieve the bodies.”
“It is a rugged mountainous area with no communication facilities and the people engaged in rescue activities are facing difficulties because of darkness.”
Only four bodies could be recovered last night before the operation was suspended due to the lack of sufficient light. Since the operation restarted today, seven more bodies have been recovered from the river. The search for 15 more continues.
At the moment, the flow of water in the river is prohibitively fast, due to which search teams are facing difficulties. However, Deputy Commissioner Upper Kohistan Hamidur Rehman has said that expert teams have been dispatched to fish out bodies from the river and are hopeful of making recoveries.
Ubaidur Rehman, general secretary of Civil Defence, told our correspondent that the victims, which include women and children, belonged to two separate families
“We fear that the children’s bodies may have moved downstream towards the Indus. Lack of resources and facilities are hampering the rescue work,” he regretted. He said police, civil defence volunteers, locals and divers were all assisting in the search for the bodies.
