HARIPUR: Three schoolboys were killed and six others injured when the tractor-trolley they were riding plunged into a gorge on the Badhora-Dalri Road near Beer Bazaar, some 45kms from the Haripur city on Monday.

The students were on way back home after school, police and witnesses said. The cause of the accident was reckless driving, the police said.

Police quoted the witnesses and injured as saying that over 50 students, most of them 9th and 10th graders from government higher secondary school for boys in Beer, saw a tractor-trolley passing through the Beer Bazaar and requested the driver to drop them near Dalri village.

They said young driver identified as Imran Shah Nawaz was driving recklessly, adding the vehicle overturned and fell into a gorge near the Maki Masjid stop about a furlong from the Beer Bazaar.

The police said the driver lost control over the wheel while saving two motorcyclists.

As a result, nine boys were injured critically, while others escaped unhurt as they jumped out of the trolley.

The injured were shifted to the Haripur Trauma Centre, where three students identified as Naeem, Mishal, residents of Dalri village, and Ahsan Shah of Thathi Syedan village were pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, a bull killed a farmer in a remote village of Ghazi tehsil, family and hospital sources said on Monday.

Ghulam Khan, 60, resident of Niqarchiyan village, was busy putting fodder to his bull when it hit him with horns, smashing him onto the ground.

The family members said the bull repeatedly hit the man with its horns on head and chest, but as none of the male members was home, the farmer could not be rescued and died on the spot.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2020