At least two students were killed and nine others were injured when a private van fell into a gorge in the Tarnoi Qalandarabad area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Abbottabad district on Saturday, officials said.

Abbottabad Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Traffic Tariq Mehmood Khan told Dawn.com that a school van plunged into a ravine in the Tarnoi Qalandarabad and that a Rescue 1122 team rushed the victims to the Ayub Teaching Hospital (ATH).

He said that two students were killed on the spot, while the nine injured were moved to ATH for treatment.

ATH spokesperson Malik Saif Rajpoot told Dawn.com that the two deceased female students were aged between 14 and 15, while seven other students and two women were brought to the hospital with injuries.

“It was a private van providing a pick-and-drop service to students and teachers from private schools and colleges. The students all belong to different institutions,” Rajpoot said, adding that the nine injured passengers were undergoing treatment.

In September last year, a man and his eight-month-old daughter died and nine others sustained injuries when a pickup van collided with a rickshaw in the Janrai Shang area of Shangla’s Bisham tehsil.

A Rescue 1122 official had said that the van, which was heading to Thakot, collided with a rickshaw coming from the opposite direction. The official said that the accident left 11 passengers from both vehicles injured and that the rickshaw caught fire after the collision.