Officials recovered three more bodies from Karachi's Malir River on Friday, taking the total number of casualties in an incident where a car was swept away by a flash flood to five.

A Toyota Corolla, having registration number BGV-765 and carrying seven people including the driver, was swept away in the river at about 8:30pm on Wednesday.

A couple, their four children and their driver were reportedly on the link road when their car was swept away. They were on their way back from Karachi to Hyderabad after attending a marriage ceremony.

The car was found floating on Thursday morning and the occupants missing. Later in the day, the bodies of two siblings, Mohammed Moosa, 10, and Hamna, 7, were recovered.

Speaking to Dawn.com Memon Goth Station House Officer Ateeq Rehman said that three more bodies — including the father and two children —were recovered from Malir River on Friday while a search operation to locate the other two was paused due to darkness, which would resume on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Edhi foundation said that their volunteers had conducted the search operation till Thursday night. They had resumed their efforts on Friday morning when they discovered the other two bodies.

He went on to say that four bodies, those of the father and his three children, had been recovered so far.

The SHO said that today’s three bodies were recovered from distance of around three to four kilometers from the place of drowning.

Rehman added that the remaining bodies could have been stuck in thick bushes in the river.

Meanwhile, the Memon Goth SHO said that the body of another man, identified as Mohammad Khan, was also recovered from the river. He said the victim had drowned in a separate incident on Thursday.

A resident of Dumloti-6, Engineer Amjad Jan Brohi, told Dawn that the bridge of Malir River on the link road (which connects National Highway with Superhighway (now Motorway-9) through Gulshan-i-Hadeed had been in a dilapidated condition for long and was not being used by commuters.

The authorities have built a causeway, which is being used by motorists.

However, because of heavy rains which continued on the outskirts of Malir for several hours on Wednesday, the causeway was overflowing when the heavy flow of water swept away the car along with its occupants.