Nation's latest tragedy on the roads blamed on speeding bus, careless driver

A head-on collision between a passenger bus and a truck on a highway in southern Pakistan killed 58 people on Tuesday, the local police said. The collision ignited a fuel fire. A rescuer later described how he carried out a survivor, a 4-year-old girl, from the burning bus.

The bus, which was carrying about 70 people, had left Swat Valley and was en route to the southern port city of Karachi when it rammed head-on into the truck near Khairpur district in Sindh province, police official Ghulam Jhokhio said.

He said the bus quickly caught fire when its fuel tank exploded.

The fatalities included 21 women, along with 19 children below the age of 14, local hospital official Jafar Soomro said, warning that the death toll was likely to rise. Fifteen people were injured and hospitalized, several of them in critical condition, he said.

Doctor Jaffer Soomro told AFP by phone from Khairpur Civil Hospital, "The accident was so severe that all of them died on the spot, and only one child died at the hospital during treatment.

"I have never seen a road accident of such a horrible magnitude."

Initially, Jhokhio, the police official, said the accident might have happened because of heavy fog. But later, the deputy chief of the highway police, A.D. Khawaja, said the bus was speeding on a part of the highway that was under construction, and the driver's carelessness caused the accident.

"The speeding bus was overcrowded and the driver was careless," Khawaja said, adding that earlier in the day, traffic police had stopped the bus and fined the driver for carrying too many passengers.

Private Pakistani TV channels broadcast live footage from the scene, showing rescue workers carrying the victims and policemen clearing the road.

Rescue officer Mohammad Ata described the inferno to Dunya TV as he held a little girl in his arms, recounting how he pulled her out.

"She was sitting all calm in a seat when I got into the burning bus," Ata said.

Deadly accidents are common on roads across Pakistan due to bad road infrastructure and rampant disregard of traffic laws. More than 9,000 road accidents are reported to the police every year, killing on average of about 5,000 people, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

A Sindh provincial minister, Siraj Durrrani, decried the tragedy and said the government badly needs to improve the infrastructure to avoid such horrific accidents.

The recovery equipment available to Pakistani emergency services is often basic, and when crashes happen away from major towns, rescue efforts can take some time, reducing injured passengers' chances of survival.

In April, a bus smashed into a tractor-trailer in a high-speed crash in Sindh, killing 42 people, while in March a horrific crash involving two buses and a gasoline tanker left 35 dead, with many burned alive when the fuel ignited.

AP - AFP