At least 14 dead after bus plunges into Indus river in northern Pakistan

The driver lost control at high speed, veering off a bridge into the icy Indus river in northern Pakistan, according to local reports.

At least 14 people have been confirmed killed and many more missing and presumed dead after a bus crashed into the Indus river in northern Pakistan, according to local authorities.

The driver lost control of the vehicle when travelling at high speed, according to a statement from authorities in the Gilgit Baltistan region, where the accident occurred on Tuesday.

The bus was carrying around two dozen people, members of a wedding procession, according to local media. The number of fatalities has not been confirmed, with some reports placing the figure as high as 26.

Rescue crews have already recovered 13 bodies from the river, while 12 passengers remain missing and are presumed to have not survived the accident due to freezing temperatures in the area, according to the Pakistani news outlet Dawn.

The bride survived the accident and was taken to hospital, but later succumbed to her injuries, Dawn reports.

The bus was heading towards Chakwal, a city in Pakistan’s Punjab province, when it careened off the road and into the river from Telchi bridge in the Diamer district at about 1pm local time (08:00 GMT), according to local broadcaster Geo.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari expressed his “deep grief over the loss of precious lives in the accident” in a post on social media platform X.

He also emphasised the “need to speed up” search and rescue operations for those yet to be found.

Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan, with 9,000 incidents reported on the country’s roads on average each year, resulting in more than 5,000 deaths, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Twenty-nine passengers were killed on August 25 when a vehicle fell into a ravine near Rawlakot, a city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the country’s north.

The same day, in southwest Pakistan’s Lasbella district in Balochistan province, 11 people were killed when a bus also fell into a ravine.

In this picture taken on June 9, 2022, locals and tourists drive through a temporary bridge after the main bridge was swept away by a lake outburst because of a melting glacier, in Hassanabad village of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region [File: Abdul Majeed/AFP]

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Al Jazeera and news agencies