DADU: Six people died and 35 suffered injuries when a coach ploughed into an oil tanker on Indus Highway at Manjhand near Sehwan town at 4.00am on Wednesday.

The coach was on its way to Karachi from Larkana when it met the accident at Rabnawaz Hotel stop in Manjhand town.

Jamshoro SSP Tariq Nawaz, who arrived at the accident site, said that police personnel and motorway staffers took out the bodies and the injured from the badly mangled bus after cutting through its gates and windows and shifted them to Manjhand taluka hospital and Liaquat University Hospital, Jamshoro.

He said the accident occurred at 4.00am and both the drivers of the coach and the oil tanker died in the tragedy. The 25 out of 35 injured were shifted to Syed Abdullah Shah Institute of Medical Sciences and were being treated for their injuries, said the institute’s director Moinuddin Siddiqui.

The deceased were identified as Riaz Nizamani, Muqaddas Noohani, Hajano Phulpoto, Manzoor Gadehi, Mohammad Saleem Khokhar and Jawad Hussain Markhand and the injured gave their names Wajed, Zulqarnain, Tayba, Yaseen, Jannat, Farhan, Imtiaz, Faisal, Zaheer Abro, Syed Mohammad Shah, Dua Batool, 6; Shabana, Uzma, Yaseen, Ghulam Sughra, Mehtab, Faheem, Ali Gohar, Manzoor, Saheb Khan, Ghulamullah, Raja Ahsan, Sajjad, Waqar, Zahed, Ameena, Anmol, Saema, Naseer, Syed Mahwish, Ms Anwar, Shahrbano, Peeral, Mukhtyar and Asifa, according to police and hospital sources.

A spokesperson for Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in a press release issued on Wednesday that the chief minister expressed deep grief over the tragedy. “I feel deeply sorry at the loss of human lives,” he said.

The chief minister directed Hyderabad commissioner to declare emergency in the hospitals concerned to ensure the best possible medical care to the injured, he said.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2024