At least 40 people were killed and four others injured on Sunday when a bus plunged into a ravine and then caught fire in Pakistan’s southern province of Baluchistan, in the region’s worst accident of its kind in nearly a decade.
“The bus crashed into a guardrail after taking a sharp turn, fell face down into a 15-meter ravine and caught fire,” the deputy commissioner of the city of Bela, Hamza Ajum, told EFE.
According to the same source, the bus was traveling from the eastern city of Quetta to southern Karachi with 44 passengers on board, of whom only four survived.
The event took place around 3:30 a.m. local time (10:30 a.m. GMT Saturday) in the Lasbela district, according to the local official, who explained that the fire occurred because the bus was carrying diesel on the roof. When falling off the cliff, the fuel ignited and flames engulfed the vehicle.
“Almost all the bodies are burned to such an extent that they cannot be identified,” Anjum said, so they have been flown to Karachi for DNA testing while the four injured received treatment in the city of Lasbella.
The source said that the rescue efforts were hampered by the lack of visibility.
Today is the most serious bus accident in Pakistan since, in January 2015, 62 people died when a bus full of passengers collided with a tanker truck carrying gasoline in the south of the country.
Last October, twenty people died, including 12 children, after the bus they were traveling in caught fire in southern Pakistan.
Pakistan has one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world due to the poor condition of its roads, poor vehicles and the fact that public transport is often overloaded with passengers.
According to data from the Pakistani government, around 30,000 people die annually in traffic accidents in the country.
