Janice R. Andrews
ISLAMACBAD— On a terrible day for Pakistan, at least 36 people died in two separate bus accidents on Sunday, and many more were hurt. The fact that the accidents happened hours apart shows how bad road safety is in the country.
First, there was an accident in the southwest of Baluchistan. Shiite Muslim tourists coming back from Iraq via Iran got off the highway along the coast of Makran and crashed into a gorge in the Lasbela district. The accident, which happened because of bad brakes, killed at least 12 people and hurt 32 more, according to Qazi Sabir, the head of police in the area. The dead are being moved to Punjab state so they can be buried there. The chief minister of Punjab, Maryam Nawaz, sent her respects to the families of the deceased.
A second crash that killed two people happened just hours later in the Kahuta area of eastern Punjab province. A bus bringing people to Kashmir, which is controlled by Pakistan, crashed into a ravine and killed all 24 people on board, including two women and a child. At first, the local cops said that seven people had survived, but doctors and government officials later revealed that no one had.
A top government officer in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, Omar Farooq, stated that there were no survivors. The bus had fallen off the Panna bridge, ending in tragedy a trip that was supposed to take people to Kashmir, an area in the Himalayas that India and Pakistan still claim and is a source of tension between the two countries. Heavy machinery and other rescue efforts were used to get people out of the ruins and clear the area.
Both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said in comments that they were saddened by the events. They have asked that the people hurt in the Baluchistan crash get the best medical care possible. The two deaths show how dangerous it is to travel by car in Pakistan, where bus crashes happen all too often because drivers are careless and don’t follow the rules of the road.
These accidents happen just a few days after another one in which 28 Pakistani tourists on their way to Iraq died in nearby Iran. On Saturday, the bodies of those killed were brought back to Pakistan’s Sindh state to be buried.
As thousands of Shiites continue to visit Iraq’s holy city of Karbala for religious events, these tragic events make it very clear that these trips are not safe. It has never been clearer that Pakistan needs better safety steps for its roads.
