QUETTA: Fifteen people, including three security personnel, were killed and 29 others injured in an accident on the Quetta-Sibi highway near the Dasht area of Mastung district, some 25km from here, on Saturday.

Sources said that a passenger van coming from Sibi to Quetta collided with a bus coming from the opposite direction. All those who died in the accident were travelling in the van.

After receiving information about the accident, police, Levies and Frontier Corps personnel rushed to the area and shifted the injured to the Quetta Civil Hospital.

Initial investigation showed that the cause of the accident was speeding.

Police officials said the van carried more passengers than its capacity and some passengers were even sitting on the rooftop. They said six people had died on the spot and the nine others during treatment at the hospital.

They said the collision was so severe that it had left the van completed damaged.

“The collision had converted the van just into scrap and the bodies were taken out from it by cutting its windows and roof,” one of the officials said.

A spokesperson for the Quetta Civil Hospital, Wasim Baig, said that around 40 injured were brought to the hospital trauma centre. Nine of them died during treatment, he said, adding that some of the injured were in a serious condition.

The driver and cleaner of the van were among the dead. Two of the three deceased security personnel belonged to Levies force and one the army.

Fourteen of the 15 deceased were identified as Hayat Khan (driver of the van), Abdul Qadir, Shahnaz, Zulfiqar Ali, Jahangir, Allah Dina, Sallar, Muhammad Farooq, Aftab Ahmed, Atiqur Rehman, Gulraz, Eid Muhammad (army man) and Shabbir Ahmed and Saeed Ahmed (Levies personnel).

Those travelling on the bus were members of the Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Science’s staff who were going to a picnic in Pir Ghaib area of Bolan district.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2017