Eleven people, including an infant, were killed when a passenger van plunged into the Yasin River in Gilgit-Baltistan's Ghizer district on Thursday evening, police said, in one of the deadliest road accidents in the mountainous region in recent months.
According to local police, the van was travelling from Gilgit to the Yasin Valley when the driver lost control near Morkah Bridge and the vehicle went off the road and into the river. The accident happened at around 7:30 in the evening, when darkness was already falling over the narrow mountain road.
Rescue teams who reached the scene first recovered the bodies of ten passengers, including two women, and pulled three injured people, among them a child, from the water. The injured were taken to hospital in Gupis for treatment. In a later update, police said the death toll had risen to eleven, including an infant, while two people were injured.
Rescue 1122 said it received information about the accident at around 8pm and immediately sent teams from Gupis, Gahkuch and Singal to the scene. Officials said darkness was making the rescue operation difficult, and the search continued through the night for anyone else who might have been aboard the van.
Police said all of the dead and injured were residents of the Yasin Valley, and that an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the accident. No cause had been established by Friday morning, and officials did not say how many people were travelling in the van in total.
Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Amjad Hussain expressed deep grief and sorrow over the loss of lives. He ordered immediate medical care for the injured and directed officials to investigate the accident and report back on what caused the van to leave the road.
The tragedy has once again drawn attention to road safety in Gilgit-Baltistan, where narrow mountain roads, sharp turns and steep drops beside rivers make every journey hazardous, especially after dark. Passenger vans are the lifeline of remote valleys such as Yasin, carrying residents between villages and the city of Gilgit, but the routes leave almost no margin for error.
Accidents of this kind are a recurring heartbreak in the region. Vehicles plunging into rivers and ravines have claimed many lives over the years, and residents and officials have repeatedly called for better road barriers, stricter checks on vehicle fitness and limits on overloading, particularly on night journeys through the mountains.
For the families in the Yasin Valley, the wait for news stretched through the night as rescue workers combed the river. The victims had been travelling home when the journey ended in disaster, and the valley woke on Friday to the news that eleven of its own would not be coming back.
Police said the investigation would look at the condition of the vehicle, the state of the road at the bridge and the circumstances in which the driver lost control. The findings, officials said, would be shared once the inquiry is complete.
