KP govt to help families of Haripur boat victims

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has pledged it will provide “all possible help and assistance” to the people affected by the capsizing of a boat that left at least four people dead in Haripur, the provincial information minister has said.

Twenty-one people were still missing after the boat capsized, officials said, with a rescue operation continuing as hopes for finding survivors fade. The boat was carrying passengers along the Indus River from Shangla to Haripur district on Wednesday when it overturned.

Twenty-four SSG deep sea divers were sent to the site after the Army’s assistance was called by the civil administration. Eleven individuals were rescued alive. “Search operation was in progress for searching remaining persons,” an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press release said on Wednesday.

“We have retrieved four dead bodies from the river including two women and children,” local police official Zahid Ullah told AFP on Thursday. “The flow of the water is very fast the river is very deep which has dimmed the chances of survival, however we will continue the rescue operation till the last individual is found,” he added.

Provincial Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai vowed the KP government would continue its efforts until all missing persons were recovered. He said the KP government was standing with the victims’ families “in this hour of need and tribulation”.

Senior police official Mohammad Ali Babakhel said the accident took place in a remote location with little communication, meaning officials did not learn of it until well after it happened. “People only came to know about the incident when a second boat carrying passengers passed through the area,” he said. “The rescue operation is still going on but there are little chances of survival,” he said. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Communication Akbar Ayub visited the site on Thursday and said provincial Chief Minister Mahmood Khan has constituted a committee investigate the circumstances of the incident.