GILGIT: Fourteen passengers lost their lives when a landslide hit their coaster near Shangus area on the under-construction Gilgit-Skardu Road on Sunday morning. The deceased inclu­ded four Frontier Works Orga­nisation (FWO) personnel and one from the Northern Light Infantry regiment of Pakistan Army.

According to rescue officials, the ill-fated coaster travelling from Rawalpindi to Skardu belonged to a private travel company.

All the 14 bodies were later recovered from under mud and rocks and shifted to a government hospital in Skardu, where four of them were identified as FWO personnel hailing from Sindh and Balochistan.

While traffic on both sides of the road remained suspended for several hours, people travelling in other vehicles assumed the road was blocked due to a landslide, a common occurrence in the area. It was not known that this time a passenger bus with 14 passengers onboard had been buried under mud and rock.

One NLI, four FWO personnel among deceased

Currently, work on the construction of Gilgit-Skardu road is being carried out by the FWO.

Some hours after the landslide, rescue teams from district administration, Rescue 1122, FWO arrived at the scene and started digging through the mud to rescue passengers and retrieve the bodies. They retrieved the bodies and shifted them to the government hospital in Skardu. After identification of the bodies, four of them were handed over to FWO officials while other bodies were handed over to heirs of the victims.

Among the deceased, the FWO personnel were identified as Mohammad Farooq Ahmed, Sonu Khan and Asif Khan hailing from Balochistan, and Arshad from Karachi, while the soldier belonging to NLI regiment was identified as Liaqat Ali, who belonged to Kharmang district of Gilgit-Baltistan. Similarly, victims Hawa Basheer and Ziyaan Basheer hailed from Skardu, Abdul Baqi from Diamer, Waliullah, Abdullah and Karimdad from Kohistan, Habibullah and Zakir Hussain from Ghanche and Dr Raza Khan from Bajaur Agency.

Gilgit-Baltistan Governor Raja Jalal Hussain Maqpoon, caretaker chief minister Mir Afzal Khan, ministers, political party heads expressed their sadness and grief over the fatal incident. In separate statements, they expressed their condolences with the families of the victims.

Landslides are common in the mountainous terrain, causing frequent damages to roads and suspension of traffic. The Gilgit-Skardu Road has been under construction for quite long.

Ghulam Abbas, a resident of Rondu Valley, says the road condition is bad and new drivers are not fit to travel on the route. According to him, new drivers are mostly unaware of the risks of travelling on the route while the frequent travellers sometimes drive for 20 hours without sleep, resulting in fatal accidents.

Earlier in March, a private transport company coaster travelling from Rawalpindi on the Gilgit-Skardu road had plunged into the Indus River, resulting in the death of 25 passengers. Three children, two women and four army soldiers were among the victims. Most passengers hailed from Skardu and Shigar districts.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2020