Eighteen people were killed on Tuesday when a passenger van collided with a speeding truck on Chiniot-Pindi Bhattian Road. Three others were severely injured, and were taken to the district headquarters hospital.
Seconds after the collision, police said the van caught fire, which, they speculated caused some of the deaths.
Witnesses said passers-by were hesitant to go approach the wreck fearing an explosion in the vehicles’ engines. They said residents came of their houses, chanting holy verses.
Rescue officials said the van from Faisalabad was headed for Islamabad, when it collided head on with a truck near Tahirabad.
They said the vehicles’ frames had to be cut to rescue the injured.
They said 13 people had died before they could be pulled out of the vehicles. Two of the bodies were charred and could not be identified. Eight injured people were taken to district headquarters hospitals in Chiniot, where five people were later pronounced dead later.
Sixteen of the deceased have been identified as Raja Begum, Shahnaz Begum, Ghulam Fatima, Nadia Bibi, Shamshad Begum, Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Akbar Khan, Samiullah, Muhammad Amjad, Muhammad Bashir, Nadeem Ahmad, Tazeem Ahmad, Fazian Aslam, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Jalal Khan and Sher Khan.
Dr Nayyar Almas, duty doctor at the DHQ hospital’s emergency ward, said that the injured were in a critical condition.
He said eight people had been brought to the hospital. Five of them had expired.
The survivors were identified as Ikram Habib, Patras Masih and his daughter Sundas Masih.
He said they were being treated at the intensive care unit. Their condition was critical, he added.
District Coordination Officer Irshad Ahmad said that initial investigation suggested that the truck driver had dozed off, resulting in the collision. Police have taken both the vehicles into custody.
Youth dies doing wheeling
In Sialkot, a 23-year-old died while one-wheeling.
Police said Muhammad Amjad was riding a motorcycle when he started doing stunts. He lost balance of the vehicle and ran into a car on Sialkot-Head Marala Road near Kotli Loharaan.
Police said he got thrown metres away and died on the spot.
The driver of the car fled the scene.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2013.