UPPER DIR: Eleven people, including three of a family, were killed and 10 suffered injuries when a coach fell into a ravine in Lowari Top on Sunday morning.

According to Zafar Khan, a police official, all 11 bodies had been retrieved and the injured taken to the district headquarters hospital, where an emergency was declared. The seriously wounded were shifted to hospitals in Timergara and Peshawar.

Hospital sources said the dead included a groom and two members of his family.

The coach, which was going to Droosh (Chitral) from Rawalpindi, met with the accident in Silai Morr, an area in Lowari Top located at 10,400 feet above sea level. It has a narrow dirt track and dangerous hairpin curves.

Two of the passengers remained unhurt as they got off the coach. One of them, Arifullah Khan of Brooz area in Droosh, said the coach fell into the ravine while trying to avoid a truck coming from the opposite direction.

“The coach was trying to negotiate a steep and narrow curve when the truck came from the opposite side. Both the large vehicles could not pass each other due to narrow road,” Arifullah said.

“The coach was overloaded and struggled to move up after its motion broke. I and another passenger got off the coach and tried to push it from behind, but it could not move up. We got tired and stepped aside helplessly. After a few seconds we heard a whirring and as we looked back, we saw the coach moving backward uncontrollably and skidded off the road,” he said.

Arifullah said he was not sure whether the brake had failed or the driver mistakenly put the vehicle in reverse gear instead of first gear while trying to move up.

District Nazim Sahibzada Fasihullah, a former federal minister, Najmuddin Khan, and other political leaders visited the site of the accident.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2017