KHAIRPUR: At least 16 devotees died and 45 others sustained multiple injuries on Saturday in two road crashes involving buses carrying devotees to Sindh’s Sehwan city for the Urs celebration of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
According to police and rescue officials, five devotees were killed and 10 others injured when the van they were travelling in collided with a trailer near Qazi Ahmed town of Shaheed Benazirabad District.
In another accident that took place near Ranipur are of Khairpur district, 11 devotees from Punjab’s Burewala died and 35 other injured.
Qazi Ahmed Station House Officer (SHO) Waseem Mirza confirmed the death toll, saying the accident occurred on Amri Road near Qazi Ahmed.
According to SHO Mirza, the van was carrying devotees to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Jamshoro District’s Sehwan city.
“The speedy van initially hit a donkey cart followed by a major collision with a trailer coming from the opposite side,” the police official said.
He added that initially, rescue teams and police reached the spot and shifted two bodies and the injured to Qazi Ahmed Taluka Hospital.
Some critically injured individuals were referred to the Peoples University of Medical & Health Sciences for Women in Nawabshah, where three were pronounced dead on arrival.
On the other hand, Khairpur Deputy Commissioner Ahmed Fawad Shah said that a bus coming from Burewala collided with a rickshaw that was crossing the National Highway near Ranipur. The driver probably tried to save the rickshaw.
He said that 11 passengers died and 35 injured. It is not clear if the rickshaw occupants are among the casualties. The dead and injured were shifted to three different health facilities including Rural Health Centre (RHC) Hingorja and Ranipur besides Gambat Institute of Medical and Sciences (GIMS) Khairpur.
According to SSP Khairpur Tauheed Memon, the bus overturned after colliding with the rickshaw. “All dead and injured come from Burewala and were travelling to Sehwan to attend Qalandar’s urs”, he said. Initially, the injured and dead were shifted to RHC but now they were brought to GIMS Hospital, he added.
“All legal formalities are being completed and then the injured and dead will be shifted to Burewala, Vehari,” he said. He added that the senior superintendent of police and Vehari deputy commissioner were in contact with the Khairpur police and administration.
“We will be providing them transportation and food,” he said. He added that he had visited the spot to oversee the rescue operation. The SSP also said that injured and dead were being identified in hospital for legal formalities.
The Urs celebrations of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar will begin on Feb 19 (18th Shabaan) and the Sindh government has announced a holiday on Feb 19. Countless number of people converge on Sehwan every year to pay homage to Qalandar, a sufi saint. Usually, the devotees start gathering in Sehwan a couple of days before commencement of urs and leave after a couple of days when urs finishes.
According to a report from April last year, citing officials, as many as 115 people were killed and 317 injured in a total of 97 traffic accidents on an incomplete section of the Indus Highway between Jamshoro and Sehwan during the last four years.
A day ago, five occupants of a car died and six others in a sports utility vehicle (SUV) were injured when the SUV coming from the wrong side of the Indus Highway rammed into the car near Jamshoro’s Sann town.
On January 9, a fatal collision between two cars near Dhabeji on the Karachi-Thatta section of the National Highway claimed four lives — including of a newly-wed man and his mother — and left six injured.
