Schoolchildren among 14 killed on road near Pattoki
By Muhammad Faisal Ali
LAHORE, Dec 19: Fourteen people died in an accident involving a trailer and a rickshaw carrying schoolchildren near Pattoki, 80km from here, on Wednesday.
Seven of the victims, including three girls and two boys belonged to the same family.
Witnesses and police said the accident took place in front of the Karachi Flour Mills at around 7:30am. Twelve people died on the spot while two succumbed to their injuries in hospital.
A police official told Dawn that the axle of the rickshaw had broken down and its driver lost control and hit the trailer loaded with fertilizer bags.
Ghulam Abbas said the driver of the trailer swerved sharply to avoid the rickshaw, but hit a sidewalk and overturned on the three-wheeler. The father of rickshaw driver Kashif said his son had been taking his sisters and nephews, other children and four labourers, to Habibabad to drop them at a school.
Kashif, his sisters Zakia Bibi, 16, and Iqra Mobeen, 11; first cousins Rafia, 15, and Amayun, 9; maternal uncles Naeem Ishaq, 17, and Nadeem Ishaq, 14; three brothers and sisters, Ashir, 7, Nadia, 6, and Sadia, 10; and Azeela Kanwal, 18, Ali Hyder, 15, Ahsaan, 7; and 50-year-old labourer Yaqoob were among the dead.
According to councillor Shahzad Ahmad, two of the injured, Naeem Ishaq and Ahsaan, died in a government hospital in Habibabad because there was no doctor or paramedical staff to attend to them.
