“The accident happened due to over-speeding and the bus crashed into the pillar of a bridge. It caught fire soon after falling into the ravine,” Hamza Anjum Nadeem, assistant commissioner in Bela, said, according to the AP.
He said four injured passengers were rescued. There was no information immediately available on the identities of the survivors or how they were able to make it through the crash.
Bodies, including those of women and children, were charred beyond recognition after their recovery from the crash site, Nadeem said. Their remains will be transported to Karachi for DNA sampling and identification, after which he said they would be returned to their families.
The bus crashed on its way from Quetta in the Baluchistan province to Karachi in the neighboring Sindh province, Nadeem said.
Photos show what appeared to be the vehicle’s charred chassis lying on the bed of a gorge as ambulance workers transported the bodies of victims.
Pakistan has recorded a high number of fatal traffic accidents in recent years.
In November, a van crashed during floods in Pakistan’s south, killing 20 people in Sindh province on Indus Highway, the AP reported at the time.
According to the country’s Bureau of Statistics, 5,608 people were killed in road accidents in 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available.
Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest yet least populated province, which shares extensive borders with Iran and Afghanistan, accounted for 318 of 2021’s road deaths, according to the same data.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
