HYDERABAD, Sept 25: Ten people were burnt to death when two vehicles caught fire after a head-on collision on the Indus Highway early on Sunday morning. Forty-three men and women suffered burn injuries. The accident took place at 3.20am near the Khasai village of Jamshoro, hours after a similar tragedy had occurred near Sann claiming 34 lives.

Information gathered by Dawn said an air-conditioned National Police Foundation van was on its way to Sehwan from Hyderabad when it collided head-on with a Karachi-bound coach.

According to officials, the wreckage of the vehicles indicated that the driver of the Karachi-bound bus had taken the vehicle to the extreme left on the road to avert the collision. But the bus was heavily overloaded and around 15 people were sitting on the roof and stools had been placed inside to accommodate additional passengers and conductors. A few passengers also sat on the floor.

The passengers, many women and children among them, screamed for help after they were stuck in thick smoke as flames enveloped the coach.

People on the roof fell on the ground and some of them suffered serious injuries.

Witnesses said the front portion of the coach caught fire soon after the collision and within moments both the vehicles were engulfed in flames.

The road was littered with splinters of window-panes and belongings of passengers.

The only fire brigade vehicle sent from the Kotri site area arrived at the place at 5am. But the hose of the fire tender was leaking and another vehicle was sent, but by that time it was

all over. The ill-fated passengers’ woes were confounded

by the panic as each of them tried to save members of his family and push them out of the coach.

The passengers who had fallen from the roof and those of the van smashed the windowpanes of the bus to help the trapped people escape the inferno.

Some villagers brought water in pitchers to extinguish the fire but both the coaches were gutted.

Traffic on the Indus Highway remained suspended, with the road blocked by other vehicles which had stopped there.

Ahmed Yar was in the coach along with 15 members of his family, three of whom could not escape the flames.

He identified them as Mohammed Mukhtiar, his brother-in-law, and Ghulam Abbas and Faisal, sons of Mukhtiar.

He said the coach was full and arrangements had been made for additional passengers, adding that the driver tried his best to avoid the collision.

Senior police officials, including RPO Bachal Sangri, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s zonal in-charge Siraj Rajput supervised the rescue work.

Edhi ambulances and those of the civil hospital and Jamshoro hospital transported the injured to the city and Jamshoro branches of the Liaquat University Hospital.

After dawn, Edhi volunteers searched the remains of the vehicles and found some human limbs.

A 12-member family of Sargodha was travelling in the Karachi-bound bus and one of its members was missing. He is believed to have died because he was not among those taken to hospitals.

The driver of the bus, Abdul Samad, died in the Civil Hospital.

Shaukat, son of Rehmatullah, and Aslam were also missing, according to their colleagues.

Three bodies in pieces were retrieved from the bus, and two of them were not identified.

Police officers were not sure about the exact number of the dead.

They said around four to five people had died as the remaining had got out of the coach.

Medical Superintendent Civil Hospital Hyderabad (CHH) Dr Khalid Qureshi told Dawn that 30 of the injured in the second accident had been brought to Jamshoro and 13 taken to the CHH.

He said that five charred bodies had been shifted to Jamshoro.

A state of emergency was declared in the Civil Hospital and the Jamshoro Hospital.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)’s medical aid committee set up a camp in the civil hospital and worked for handing over the identified bodies to relatives and shifting the injured to their homes.

Some of the bodies could not be entered in the hospital’s medico-legal section as they were handled by the MQM’s medical aid committee.

Civil Hospital Hyderabad (CHH) reported on Sunday night to have received 40 bodies and 162 people injured in the two accidents — the first on Saturday night and the other in the wee hours of Sunday. Till the filling of this report, bodies were lying in the CHH and nine at its Jamshoro branch.

According to Dr Khalid Qureshi, who issued a break-up of the casualties in the two accidents, 119 injured in the first accident and bodies of 29 people were received at the hospital.

After the second incident, five charred bodies were taken to the Jamshoro branch of the hospital and 13 of the 43 injured were taken to the CHH and 30 to the Jamshoro branch. All the bodies could not be entered into the hospital’s record as chaotic conditions prevailed there following the accidents and because of the rush of relatives.