KARACHI: A 12-year-old victim of the Nawabshah school van tragedy died at a private hospital on Friday when the school principal was shifted to Karachi for treatment, sources told Dawn.

With Sidra Wagra’s death, the number of schoolgirls who lost their lives in the tragedy rose to 18. A driver and two schoolteachers also died in the accident, while the condition of five other patients was stated to be critical.

The girl had been admitted to the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) from where she was shifted to the Ziauddin Hospital, Clifton, for all ventilators at the AKUH were occupied. “Sidra was brought to us unconscious at 1am. She already had a surgery, perhaps back in Nawabshah. She was severely anaemic and had hemothorax (a condition that results from blood accumulating in the pleural cavity). We tried to manage her but she couldn’t survive,” said Sultan Hassan, the head of Ziauddin hospital’s public affairs and marketing department.

The body was later moved to her hometown where she was laid to rest in her ancestral graveyard in village Karimabad near Daulatpur.

The other critically injured patient shifted from the AKUH was 15-year-old Muqaddas Noor, who is currently under treatment at another private hospital, Healthcare Hospital.

“Her condition is still critical while being on a ventilator. She is suffering from kidney failure and internal bleeding,” said an official of the Healthcare Hospital.

The principal of the Bright Future Public School, Zakia Jamshed, was brought to the AKUH on Friday.

The sources said the condition of Zakia Jamshed and three other accident victims was critical.

The chief minister, meanwhile, reached Daulatpur where he sympathised with the relatives of the deceased and gave cheques of Rs500,000 to each family of the deceased students, teachers and the driver.

He directed Hyderabad division commissioner to conduct a thorough inquiry of the accident and file its report within a week. He later told journalists that the government would amend traffic rules.

Meanwhile, people in large numbers attended the soyem of the deceased students held at Government Girls High School, Daulatpur.