At least 13 dead in car-van collision

JHELUM/RAWALPINDI: At least 13 passengers, including five women and three children, were killed when a car collided with a passenger van travelling in the opposite direction near Pind Matay Khan on GT Road on Sunday.Another 15 were injured.

Motorway Police spokes­person Raja Aftab Aslam told The Express Tribune that four students had hired a Toyota Corolla car from Sohawa on Sunday afternoon to travel to Gujjar Khan to participate in a college event.

At around 1 pm, a tyre of the car burst, causing it to veer into the oncoming traffic and collide with the Toyota Hiace van, en route from Gujrat to Rawalpindi.

The dead and injured were rushed to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Sohawa for treatment.

Of the injured, three minors — two boys between the ages of two and three years and a girl of around six years of age - were shifted to the Children’s Hospital of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad. Doctors there said that one child was stable while two others had serious head injuries.

The remaining were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Rawalpindi.

Doctors at THQ Sohawa identified seven bodies including those of Haris Waheed, Umar Zahid, Muhammad Aqeel and the driver of the van Muhammad Afzal. However, six bodies have not yet been not been identified and have been shifted to the morgue in the THQ.

Investigation team formed

Motorway Police North Zone DIG Abbas Ahsan has formed a committee, with Motorway SSP Farrukh Rasheed at its head, to probe the crash and see whether there was any negligence on part of traffic officials leading to the road accident.

Aslam added that the Motorway DIG and the SSP had visited the crash site and oversaw rescue efforts. (TRANSLATED BY ARSHAD SHAHEEN, WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM ASMA GHANI IN ISLAMABAD)

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2017.