By Staff Reporter
QUETTA: At least 12 people have been killed and about two dozen injured after a passenger coach and a minibus collided head-on on the Quetta-Karachi highway in Balochistan province on Friday, police said.
The coach was travelling from the port city of Gwadar to Karachi, while the minibus was heading to Karachi from Bela, police said. The vehicles met near Zero Point in Uthal, in Lasbela district. Seven passengers died at the scene and five others later died in hospital.
Inspector Aftab Malik said that the coach was speeding when it hit the oncoming vehicle at Zero Point, “where the road curves”. He said some of the injured were in a critical condition, raising fears that the toll could rise.
Abdul Hakeem Lasi, who is in charge of the Edhi Centre in Bela, said Edhi workers took around 22 injured passengers to hospital before they were moved on to Karachi for treatment. Seven were in a serious condition, he said. Most of the casualties were in the minibus.
Rescue officials said the dead included seven men and five women. Local media reported that women and children were among the injured and arrangements were being made to return the bodies to families.
Zero Point has been the scene of a deadly crash before. Last October, seven people, including women and children, were killed and 17 injured when a truck loaded with stones hit a Karachi-bound coach there. The Balochistan government announced an official inquiry into that crash to establish its causes.
Friday’s collision came two days after 10 people were killed and 44 injured when a passenger bus overturned after hitting a road divider in Rojhan tehsil of Rajanpur district, in Punjab province, on the Indus Highway.
Last month, two people were killed and 15 injured in a head-on collision between a passenger coach and an LPG bowser near Kharkhera Customs on the main National Highway in Winder, in Balochistan.
In February, five people, including a local journalist, were killed in two separate road accidents in Winder and Khuzdar districts. In January, four people died and several others were injured in a crash near Wadh, in Khuzdar district, on the Quetta-Karachi National Highway.
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