At least 40 people were killed and eight others injured after an overcrowded passenger bus veered off a highway and plunged into a ravine in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, officials said.
The bus was traveling from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province, to Peshawar when it crashed in the mountainous Dana Sar area of Zhob district.
Quoted by AFP, Sanaullah Sherani, head of the district’s emergency center, said the bus plunged about 70 to 80 feet, or 21 to 24 meters, into the ravine.
Quoted by the Associated Press, Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said the driver appeared to have lost control of the speeding bus early Friday near the provincial border between Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Rind said the bus was overcrowded because it was also carrying passengers from another bus that had broken down along the route.
Mohamed Nasir, a police official, told the German news agency DPA that speeding was a likely cause of the crash, though authorities had opened an investigation.
Rescue teams from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were deployed to the scene, but the rugged terrain complicated efforts to recover the dead and evacuate the injured.
Fazal Din, a rescue department spokesman, told DPA that emergency workers were using cutting equipment and other machinery to reach people trapped inside the wreckage. Authorities were also working to identify those killed.
President Asif Ali Zardari expressed sorrow over the crash, offered condolences to the families of the victims and wished the injured a swift recovery.
Deadly road accidents are common in Pakistan, where speeding, reckless driving, poorly maintained vehicles and weak enforcement of traffic rules contribute to a high rate of fatalities. In May, 17 people were killed and five others injured when a minibus struck a bus parked along a motorway in northwestern Pakistan.
