Bus accident killed 42 people in Pakistan and several
seriously hurt. A speeding passenger bus smashed into a tractor-trailer
in southern Pakistan on 20/04/2014 Sunday, and killing 42 people including 14
children and injuring more than a dozen others with many in critical condition,
according to the Pakistan’s police.
Several passengers were trapped inside the pink bus that
was left badly mangled after the high-speed crash in the town of Sukkur, 425km
(266 miles) north of Karachi in the province of Sindh.
Excavators were used to pull the tractor-trailer from the
bus, as rescuers struggled to pull out the stranded passengers. One eyewitness
said he saw several passengers pleading for help.
“They were screaming and shouting: ‘save us, save us’,”
he told reporters.
Mohammad Faisal, a senior police official, said: “Most of
the passengers were trapped between their seats; we rescued them by cutting the
bus body with metal cutters.”
He said the speeding bus was trying to overtake the
tractor-trailer when it veered out of control. The collision was so severe, he
added, that 25 passengers died on the spot. The dead included six members of a
10-member family who were travelling on the bus to visit their relatives in
Karachi.
Pakistan has one of the world’s worst records for fatal
traffic accidents due to poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless
driving. Sixteen people were killed and 49 injured when an overloaded truck
crashed into a ravine earlier this month in the central province of Punjab. A
collision between two buses and a petrol tanker killed 35 people in southwest
Pakistan in late March 2014.