At least 20 people were burned to death on Tuesday and six others were injured when a fuel tanker truck caught fire after colliding with a passenger bus in eastern Pakistan.
The accident occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, on a road near the city of Multan, in the eastern province of Punjab, when the bus collided with the tanker truck, local police spokesman Abid told the EFE news agency. Hussein.
It seems that the driver fell asleep from the way he hit the tanker from behind,” said Hussain, who was at the Multan police checkpoint.
The Multan administration manager, Amir Khattak, went to the scene of the accident and reported on the social network Twitter that the bus, which was going from the city of Lahore (north) to Karachi (south), hit the tanker from behind and crashed “The fire started.”
Qazi Ayub, head of emergencies at the Nishtar Hospital in Multan, to which the victims were transferred, explained to Efe that the twenty dead had serious burns and were unrecognizable.
That’s why, “A DNA test will be carried out to identify the bodies.”
In addition, among the six injured, according to Ayub, four suffered severe burns over 20% of the body and another victim suffered burns over 70% of the body.
Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi ordered an investigation into the accident, while Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif lamented the tragedy and conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims.
Pakistan has one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world due to the poor state of its roads, the deficiencies of the vehicles and the overload of passengers in public transport.
According to data from the Pakistani government, some 30,000 people die annually in traffic accidents in the country.
Only this Tuesday, in another accident, eight more people died and another 20 were injured after a bus carrying passengers fell into a ravine in the southern province of Sindh, according to local television Aaj.
Source: Observadora
