KOHAT, Oct 13: A 14-wheel oil tanker slipped off the narrow hilly track on the Indus Highway between Kohat and Peshawar during rain and dangled, blocking the highway and bringing to halt all kind of traffic.

The accident caused a huge traffic jam and immense hardship to thousands of commuters travelling between Karachi, Dera Ismail Khan, Parachinar, Bannu, Karak, Hangu and Peshawar who remained stranded for more than 15 hours on the hilltop without food and water until the vehicle was pulled on the track by an army crane.

The army operation to clear the road took too much time because the crane repeatedly failed to pull the oil tanker which was dangling and whose weight was more than triple the crane itself.

The army, which has the only crane in Kohat, charges Rs8,000 from the truckers just to push the trucks on the road whereas Rs50,000 are charged for pulling the trucks out of the ravine. The 11-kilometre-long hilly track is being replaced by a two-kilometre-long Kohat Tunnel, a Rs7 billion NHA project on which the work has been stopped after the foreign consultants and engineers left Pakistan in the wake of US attacks on Afghanistan.

The arduous road is extremely dangerous and since its construction in 1927, 53,000 people have been killed in accidents and thousands of vehicles have fallen in the deep ravine.