Dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured in the last 36 hours as thick fog enveloped the plains of Punjab, causing a number of collisions and snarling traffic for more than half a day.
Both the Motorway and Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore, were temporarily closed down.
Imran Shah, a spokesman for the National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP), said that the Motorway remained closed for 14 hours on Monday and it was closed again for traffic at around 6:30pm on Tuesday as the fog brought visibility down to a dangerously low level.
Airport authorities said up to 14 flights were cancelled while another 15 were delayed. They also said that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s plane was also diverted to Islamabad due to the extremely low visibility at the airport. The chief minister was returning from India after attending the Kabbadi tournament there.
In Lahore, two women and two men died in a collision between two cars and a motorcycle late Monday night. Another motorcyclist, Liaquat, died in Johar Town, after his two-wheeler rammed into a truck. In another incident, a rickshaw hit a motorcycle early Tuesday morning, killing one person.
In Gujranwala, a pick-up van rammed into a heavy trailer due to the zero visibility. Six members of a family, including three children who were travelling in the pick-up truck, were killed in the accident.
Similar accidents also took place in Jhang, Layyah, Sargodha, Faisalabad, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalnagar.
The worst hit was Multan division where at least 18 people died in different accidents and 149 people were injured due to the dense and dangerous fog.
Six flights of three airlines at the Muhammad Bin Qasim International Airport, Multan, were cancelled owing to the foggy weather.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 18th, 2013.