HARIPUR: Four passengers were killed and six others injured when a van plunged into a gorge in a remote village of Nara Amazai union council, police and survivors said on Wednesday.

Tanvir Khan, SHO Nara Amazai police station, said at least 23 persons, all belonging to Shingri village, were returning from a neighbouring village when the overloaded vehicle skidded off the road at a sharp turn near Kupri village and fell into a gorge. As a result, three persons were killed on the spot and seven others injured.

Majority of the passengers, all of them young men, survived as they jumped out of the falling vehicle, police and one of the survivors said.

The area people shifted the bodies and the injured to the tehsil headquarters hospital, Ghazi, where an injured passenger succumbed to injuries. The victims were identified as Kala Khan, Luqman, Mohsin and Nawaz. The injured included Khan Bahadur, Hamidullah Khan, Jamrod, Iftikhar, Akram and Munsif. Police registered the case against the driver and arrested him.

Meanwhile, an electronics shop was gutted in Koochi Market on Tuesday evening, police and owner said on Wednesday.

The owner said some volunteers and later firefighters helped him extinguish the fire. According to him, the fire reduced appliances at his shop to ashes inflicting a loss of over Re1 million on him. The police said the cause of fire was electricity short-circuiting.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2019