Four dead, seven injured in highway crash

Four people, including a 13-year-old girl, died and seven others sustained injuries when a Larkana-bound passenger bus collided with a loading truck, a Hyundai Shehzore, on the Northern Bypass late on Monday night.

Orangi Town Division SP Abid Ali Baloch told The News that the accident took place near Manghopir’s Mai Gari police post. He said the passenger bus (BSB-188) veered off the Northern Bypass after colliding with the truck.

The 36-seater bus, which was going to Larkana from the city’s Hub area, was full to capacity and some passengers were also travelling on its roof, said the cop. He added that some of the victims told him that both vehicles were speeding when they rammed into each other.

The officer said the truck’s driver had escaped and was yet to be found. SP Baloch said a heavy contingent of police and the paramilitary force attended the scene and moved the injured to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) for treatment.

Manghopir police SHO Haji Sanaullah identified the dead as bus driver Ameer Shah, Azeem Aziz, Haq Nawaz, and a thirteen-year-old girl whose identity was yet to be ascertained. The injured included Aman, Peera, Rizwana, Nazia and Shahnawaz, he said, adding that a three-month-old child and another man were yet to be identified.

Later, Sindh Home Minister Suhail Anwar Siyal met with the victims’ families at the hospital. He directed officials to move the injured to the Aga Khan University Hospital, announcing that the government would bear all expenses for their treatment.

Earlier this month, on January 5, a total of 16 people, including four women and five children, were injured in two separate accidents on the city's highways. As per details, 13 people sustained injuries in a head-on crash between a Hiace van and a truck near the Razzakabad Police Training Centre on the National Highway. Among those injured in the collision were five children and three women.

In the day’s other accident, three people including a woman sustained injuries when a bus carrying a wedding party collided with a trailer truck on Super Highway near the Lucky Cement factory.

Before that, on December 17, 14 police recruits were injured, two of them critically, when a speeding trailer truck collided head-on with a police van near Fast University on National Highway. Prior to that, on October 19, two people died and two others sustained injuries in an accident between a dumper truck and a sport utility vehicle (SUV) on the Super Highway.