ISLAMABAD – Two separate bus crashes hours apart in Pakistan on Sunday left at least 36 people dead and dozens more injured, officials said.
The first happened when a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from Iraq through Iran fell from a highway into a ravine in southwest Pakistan, killing at least 12 people and injuring 32 others, police and officials said. The driver lost control on the Makran coastal highway when the brakes failed, while passing through Lasbela district in Baluchistan province, local police chief Qazi Sabir said.
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Authorities in Baluchistan said that arrangements were being made to send the bodies of the pilgrims to Punjab province for burial. Maryam Nawaz, the chief minister in Punjab, expressed her condolences after the crash.
Hours later, 24 people were killed when a bus fell into a ravine in the Kahuta district of the eastern Punjab province, police and officials said, including two women and a child. Omar Farooq, a senior government official in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said there were no survivors.
Initially, local police said that there were seven injured, but later doctors and government officials said that everyone onboard the bus died in the crash. Raja Moazzam, a rescue official, said most of the bodies had been identified.
According to residents, the bus crash happened early Sunday and locals initially took part in the rescue work, and ambulances of emergency service crews arrived later.
The bus was heading to the Pakistan-administrated disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir — claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan — when it fell from the Panna bridge in the Kahuta district, said Sardar Waheed, a senior government official, adding that heavy machinery was used to lift the wreckage to ensure no one was trapped underneath.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in separate statements, offered their condolences and expressed sorrow over the two crashes. They asked authorities to ensure the provision of the best medical treatment for the injured pilgrims.
The crashes on Sunday occurred days after 28 Pakistani pilgrims were killed in a bus crash in neighboring Iran while heading to Iraq. A Pakistani military plane flew the bodies of the victims home on Saturday to be buried in the southern Sindh province.
Thousands of Shiites travel to Iraq’s holy city of Karbala to commemorate Arbaeen — Arabic for the number 40 — to mark the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, who became a symbol of resistance during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history.
Bus crashes are common in Pakistan, mostly because of negligence by drivers, who often violate traffic rules.
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Associated Press writers Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Ashfaq Ahmad in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, contributed to this story.