The death toll has risen to 42 people when two passenger buses carrying smuggled petrol and diesel on their rooftops caught fire after a fierce collision with a truck on the RCD Highway near Gadani Morr in Lasbela district of Balochistan on Saturday.
Police and rescuers had confirmed 37 deaths in the tragic accident and inferno till the filing of this report.
The collision and resulting fire was so fierce that one of the buses and the truck were completely burnt and the passengers did not get a chance to escape the fire and were burnt alive before the rescuers arrived.
Police officials from Hub, Coast Guards personnel, Frontier Corps officials as well as volunteers of the Edhi Foundation and a couple of fire tenders reached the spot and took part in rescue activities and the shifting of bodies and injured to hospitals in Karachi.
Officials said most of the deaths occurred due to the hydraulic doors and sealed windows of the air-conditioned buses. When the buses caught fire after the collision their doors were jammed and people could not escape from the windows due to the presence of iron bars.
There were reports of some six to seven Pakistan Navy personnel among the dead in the accident who were returning to their bases in Karachi from Balochistan but Navy officials neither confirmed nor denied such reports.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Navy said an investigation was under way to find out if Navy personnel were also on board the buses but added that the actual situation could only be ascertained after DNA tests. He said samples were being taken for DNA tests as almost all the bodies were completely charred and were not identifiable.
The Edhi Foundation said they received 37 bodies, of which 36 were shifted to the mortuary as they were charred beyond recognition while the body of the driver of the ill-fated truck, who was identified as Nasir Ali, was handed over to his family.
Anwar Kazmi, spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, said the truck driver was burnt alive on the driving seat of the truck after the accident and he was identified due to his body’s presence in the truck, but the 36 bodies taken out of the buses were completely charred and it was even difficult to distinguish between male and female bodies.
“Three to four bodies were of children who can be identified due to their size and height, otherwise they were unrecognisable,” he added.
Forensic scientists collected the DNA samples of the charred bodies and sent them to Islamabad for identification as it was the only solution left to identify the ill-fated passengers who perished in the accident.
“Mothers cannot even recognise their children,” says Riasat Ali, a clerk at the Edhi Morgue in Sohrab Goth, Karachi. “Today’s incident reminds me of the 2012 Baldia Town factory fire in which everyone was burnt to death as well,” he recalls, as he sweeps away ashes on the floor.
Scores of burnt bodies – and body parts – lie wrapped in white cotton shrouds, tucked away on stretchers of the morgue.
The stench of burnt flesh pervades the hall which was crammed with 37 charred bodies of passengers of the ill-fated bus that collided with a truck early Saturday. Outside the hall, some relatives of the victims cling to their cell phones, while some carry photographs of their loved ones to help in the identification.
“I took these [pictures] from their houses, but I think these are useless now,” says Salman, as he chokes. He has come to the Edhi mortuary to identify his friends, Zafar and Khalid. “I came here to take their bodies to their parents so that they can bury them.”
Shakir, who lives in Lyari, Karachi, is also waiting outside the mortuary. “Akhtar and Tanveer were in the bus and since the accident, their phones are not responding,” he says about his friends who were coming from Balochistan in the bus. “But all bodies are burnt. They decompose if you touch them,” he exclaims. “I could not even differentiate between a man and a woman. God save us from such days.”
“We have identified the drivers of the two trucks – only because their bodies were found in the driving seats,” says Ahmed Edhi, the assistant in-charge of Edhi Karachi Zone. One of the bodies has been handed over to the heirs, he adds. Thirty-six bodies remain in the mortuary but they can only be identified after DNA tests.
Edhi spokesperson Anwar Kazmi says that male and female recognition is not possible but they know that five bodies are of children.
The Sindh Health Department has set up an information desk at the Edhi Cold Storage for the collections of samples for DNA identification.
Sunday 23 March 2014
http://tribune.com.pk/story/686194/final-rites-mothers-cant-even-recognise-their-children/
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-29262-42-die-as-accident-causes-inferno-on-RCD-Highway
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