By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: At least 24 people were killed and more than two dozen others injured on Saturday in two separate road accidents in Pakistan’s Punjab and Balochistan provinces, as heavy winter fog and reckless driving again proved deadly on the country’s highways, officials said.
The deadlier of the crashes occurred in the early hours in Sargodha district, where a truck carrying 23 passengers and cargo plunged from the Galapur Bangla bridge into a dry canal, according to Rescue 1122, the Punjab emergency service. Fourteen people died, including six children, and nine others were injured.
The truck was traveling from Islamabad to Faisalabad for a funeral when dense fog forced it off the motorway and onto a local route in Kot Momin tehsil, the service said in a statement. “The truck lost control because of poor visibility,” the statement said, adding that passengers became trapped beneath the overturned vehicle.
Rescue operations began immediately after the incident, with the injured receiving first aid on site before being transported to Civil Hospital Kot Momin. Three were later moved to Kot Momin Tehsil Headquarters Hospital.
Dense fog has repeatedly disrupted traffic across Punjab this winter, prompting closures of major motorways like the M-1, M-2, M-3, M-4 and M-11 earlier on Saturday, the National Highways and Motorway Police said. Just days earlier, on Tuesday, 10 people died, and 21 were injured in multiple fog-related collisions in the province, including a bus-car-motorcycle crash in Toba Tek Singh that killed four.
In a separate accident later that day, a passenger coach overturned on the Makran Coastal Highway near Hudd Goth in Ormara tehsil, Balochistan, killing 10 people, including a young girl, and injuring more than a dozen others, the Edhi rescue service said.
The coach was heading from Karachi to Jiwani, carrying laborers from various parts of Sindh, said Superintendent of Police Aslam Bangulzai of the Coastal Highway Police. The bodies and injured were taken to PNS Darman Jah Hospital in Ormara, with an Edhi mobile morgue dispatched to transport the deceased to Karachi.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti spoke by phone with his Sindh counterpart, Murad Ali Shah, to coordinate care for the victims, according to Bugti’s office. Critically injured passengers were airlifted to private hospitals in Karachi, and Gwadar Deputy Commissioner Naqeebullah Khan was directed to oversee administrative arrangements.
President Asif Ali Zardari expressed deep sorrow over the losses in both accidents, offering condolences to the families and stressing the need for caution amid changing weather conditions. “Safeguarding human lives was the state’s foremost priority,” he said, instructing provincial governments to raise public awareness on safe driving.
Road fatalities are a persistent problem in Pakistan, often stemming from overspeeding, hazardous overtaking and lax enforcement of rules. Earlier this month, five passengers died and 24 were injured when a bus fell into a ravine in Talagang district after taking an alternative route. On Dec. 31, 14 were killed in a head-on collision near Jhang involving a university bus and a van, leading to the suspension of four highway patrol officials. In Balochistan’s rugged terrain, where single-lane roads link remote areas, such risks are amplified. On Friday, five people died in Washuk district when a vehicle carrying smuggled Iranian oil collided with another.
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