5 dead, 10 injured as van, trailer collide in Sindh’s Shaheed Benazirabad district

At least five passengers died while 10 others were injured on Saturday as a van collided with a trailer near Qazi Ahmed town of Sindh’s Shaheed Benazirabad District, police said.

Fatal road accidents on highways occur frequently in Pakistan, with the main reasons including speeding, hazardous overtaking and disregard for traffic rules.

Qazi Ahmed Station House Officer (SHO) Waseem Mirza confirmed the death toll to Dawn.com, adding that the accident occurred on Amri Road near Qazi Ahmed.

According to SHO Mirza, the van was carrying pilgrims to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Jamshoro District’s Sehwan city.

“The speedy van initially hit a donkey cart followed by a major collision with a trailer coming from the opposite side,” the police official said.

He added that initially, rescue teams and police reached the spot and shifted two bodies and the injured to Qazi Ahmed Taluka Hospital.

Some critically injured individuals were referred to the Peoples University of Medical & Health Sciences for Women in Nawabshah, where three were pronounced dead on arrival.

According to a report from April last year, citing officials, as many as 115 people were killed and 317 injured in a total of 97 traffic accidents on an incomplete section of the Indus Highway between Jamshoro and Sehwan during the last four years.

A day ago, five occupants of a car died and six others in a sports utility vehicle (SUV) were injured when the SUV coming from the wrong side of the Indus Highway rammed into the car near Jamshoro’s Sann town.

Last month, at least one person died and 11 others were injured as a Karachi-bound bus collided with a stationary trailer near Nooriabad on the M-9 Karachi-Hyderabad motorway. Over a week before that, two youths and a child were killed when two motorcycles were hit by speeding vehicles on Indus Highway in Jamshoro.

On January 9, a fatal collision between two cars near Dhabeji on the Karachi-Thatta section of the National Highway claimed four lives — including of a newly-wed man and his mother — and left six injured.