Two killed as truck rams into Khanna police station

Another man critically injured as driver flees, traffic disrupted on Expressway


Arsalan Altaf July 21, 2017
Police officials stand at the site where a truck rammed into Khanna police station killing two people. PHOTO: EXPRESS

ISLAMABAD: Two men were killed while another was critically injured when a truck ran them over and rammed into the Khanna police station on Thursday afternoon.

Police said the truck, which was loaded with iron rods, had barreled into people standing by the roadside and into the boundary wall of the station.

The dead were identified as Akhtar Ali and Yasir Hussain. However, no policeman was hurt in the incident.

The truck driver, though, managed to flee.

“The driver fled. However, we have located the owner of the truck in Batkhela, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and have contacted him,” said Khanna police station SHO Sattar Shah. “I think the truck driver had either slept or lost control of the vehicle [due to speeding],” Shah added.

The accident also disrupted traffic coming from Koral on Khanna Pul since two lanes of the Expressway had to be closed to traffic after the accident.  The police station had been set up in 2015 on a section of the greenbelt along the Islamabad Expressway. There is no pavement which separates the station’s boundary wall from the road.

Meanwhile, a man was crushed to death by a truck within the remits of Shahzad Town police station. Officials said that 60-year-old Maqsood died after the truck ran over him.



Two drown in Soan River

Meanwhile, two young men drowned in the Soan River as they swam in the deep water.

Swimmers of the Rescue 1122 fished out the bodies of 18-year-old Qasim and 23-year-old Hayat from under a bridge on the river.

Rescuers had received a call at around 4pm that the two young men had drowned in the river near a private housing society.

The rescuers rushed to the area soon afterwards. They managed to recover Hayat’s body soon after reaching the spot. However, it took over one and a half hour to recover Qasim’s body.

Both bodies were shifted to the district headquarters hospital for post-mortem. After the autopsy, the bodies would be handed over to their families.

Meanwhile, a mechanic was killed after a speeding dumper truck rammed into another truck which was parked on the side of the GT Road near the Sangjiani Toll Plaza.

Officials said that 35-year-old Ali Asghar was busy repairing his truck, which had broken down, when at around 9am on Thursday morning, a speeding dumper truck crashed into his truck.

The accident resulted in multiple injuries to 45-year-old Ashfaq Ahmed, driver of the speeding dumper truck and 37-year-old Liaqat Khan, conductor of the truck.

The dead and the injured were shifted to the nearby Tehsil Headquarters Hospital (THQ) in Taxila. Officials said that the accident occurred after breaks of the speeding truck failed and the driver could not control the vehicle.

According to data shared by Rescue 1122, the rescuers have received calls for around 24 road accidents in the past 24 hours in the Rawalpindi district.

While there no causalities were reported in these incidents, as many as 32 people were injured. Of these, 22 injured were shifted to different hospitals for medical treatment while 10 were given first aid on the spot.

WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM MUDASSIR RAJA IN RAWALPINDI

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21st, 2017.

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