KARAK: Three people were killed and 14 others, including eight women, received serious injuries in a road accident here on Wednesday.

Police sources said that a pickup van carrying passengers to a remote Kandokhel village from Karak city plunged into a deep ravine in hilly area of Monaka Banda. As a result, all the passengers travelling in the vehicle received serious injuries.

The local people retrieved the injured from the ravine and shifted them to the DHQ hospital, Karak, where the doctors pronounced one of them, identified as Shireenzada, dead. Later, two other passengers identified as Yasir and Khyal Zaman also succumbed to their injuries in the hospital.

The other injured were admitted to the hospital while the doctors stated their conditions to be serious.

The injured passengers said that the women had come to Karak city for withdrawing financial assistance of the Benazir Income Support Programme and the incident occurred when they were returning to their village.

They said the unpaved hilly road was unfit for use and that the local people had been facing hardships and life risk daily while travelling to the district headquarters through this track.

They demanded of the provincial government to build the road as early as possible to make their travel safe as the dwellers of Kandokhel and many other adjacent localities also used the same track for going to Karak and other parts of the country.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2019