Islamabad: At least 58 people, including 21 women and 19 children, were killed and several others injured on Tuesday when a overloaded passenger bus collided head-on with a speeding truck in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
The bus was headed to Karachi from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the north-west when it collided with the truck near Theri bypass in Sukkur district of Sindh.
The bus quickly caught fire after its fuel tank exploded.
At least 58 people were killed in the accident, Afzal Somoro, a police official, told PTI.
The rescue team shifted the victims to hospitals of Sukkur and Khairpur districts where emergency was declared.
A doctor from Khairpur hospital said that 21 women and 19 children were among the dead.
Fifteen injured were also being treated for wound. Some three people were still in critical conditions.
An initial probe shows that the bus driver’s carelessness caused the accident, police said, adding the bus was carrying about 70 passengers and was clearly overloaded.
There are, however, conflicting reports about the accident.
Local media said that the driver of the bus was trying to overtake another vehicle and rammed into a truck coming from the opposite side.
However, a traffic police official said that the bus was about to take the road after getting fuel from a filling station when it hit a speeding truck.
President Mamnoon Hussain and Sindh province governor Ishratul Ebad expressed sorrow over the loss of lives and ordered an inquiry into the incident. (PTI)