KARACHI, Sept 4: The task of removing debris from the site of the collapsed portion of the Shershah Bridge is set to start on Wednesday.

The operation is to be carried out by the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) in collaboration with the National Logistics Cell (NLC), which had constructed the ill-fated bridge.

The 70-metre Baldia loop of the structure had buckled in the afternoon of Saturday. Though no more victims have been recovered from under the debris of the bridge since Saturday night, rescue workers fear that some bodies may still have been there and could be found only when the mangled mass of concrete is lifted.

Lt-Gen (retd) Farooq Ahmed, Chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), told Dawn on Tuesday that the FWO, along with the NLC, would start removal of the rubble from the collapsed portion of the Northern Bypass.

“Three separate teams, comprising 70 experts, will start this operation by Wednesday,” he said.

Gen Farooq, who is also the chief of the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission, said two of the teams with all the required equipment at their disposal would demolish the structures on modern and scientific grounds. “The third team will support the operation by all means,” he added.

He said the parallel segments of the bridge would also be demolished.

He was of the view that that it was not any east task to remove the four huge collapsed sections of the bridge, each of them 60-metre-long solid concrete weighing more than 3,500 tons.

Gen Farooq said that experts would cut or crush two slabs of the bridge into small pieces before removing the wreckage.

In reply to a question, he said that an inquiry committee comprising experts of structural and construction sciences had already been constituted to conduct an inquiry into the collapse of the bridge.