Faisalabad road tragedy: Bus-trailer collision leaves 19 dead

Witnesses blame speeding for the deadly crash that left 20 people wounded

FAISALABAD: At least 19 people were killed and 20 others wounded when a speeding passenger bus rammed into a trailer on Jhang-Faisalabad road in a pre-dawn crash on Wednesday.

The bus bearing registration no BSD-155 was en route to Layyah from Lahore via Faisalabad, witnesses said. It broke the speed limit and collided head-on with a trailer coming from the opposite direction on the two-way road near Adda Sohal, 28 kilometres away from Faisalabad. The accident happened around 2:30am in the limits of Thikriwala police station.

“The bus driver was driving recklessly. He applied the emergency brakes when a donkey cart appeared on the road, but could not control his speeding vehicle which smashed into a Bahawalpur-bound trailer loaded with iron rods,” one witness told The Express Tribune.

At least 19 passengers – among them two children and three women – were killed and 20 others received multiple injuries.

Rescue 1122 teams rushed to the spot and shifted the casualties to the Allied Hospital where medics said some of them were being treated for life-threatening wounds. Some of the dead have been identified as Manzooran, 50, Samia, 15, Abdur Rehman, 8, his brother Ahmad Raza, 10, Aasia, 26, five-month-old Aswad, Shahadat Ali, 4, Ashir, 5, Kashif, 18, Muhammad Nadeem and Sheeraz Yaqoob.

The police reached the crash site to collect evidence. A case was subsequently registered against the drivers of both vehicles who escaped from the scene.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th,  2016.