Nawabshah tragedy: Funeral prayers of 17 victims offered

NAWABSHAH: The funeral prayers of seventeen victims mostly students, who lost their lives in a road accident in Nawabshah on Wednesday afternoon, were offered today (Thursday), Geo News reported.

The air of Daulatpur is still filled with grief and many heartrending events were witnessed at the funeral of the seventeen victims.

It is pertinent to mention here that 22 persons including 17 schoolchildren died when their van was crushed by a dumper on the Nawabshah-Qazi Ahmed Link Road on Wednesday.

The five adults included the van driver and two school teachers. The van with 30 students and two teachers on board had gone to Nawabshah from Daulatpur where the schoolchildren took part in a quiz contest. While on its way back to Nawabshah, the van met with the tragic accident.

The impact of the collision was so severe that it hurled the occupants of the van out of it, and when the rescue teams arrived at the scene of the accident, they found the bodies scattered all over the place. The children were from Class III to Class VIII.

On receiving information, police, Edhi and other relief teams rushed to the accident site and started relief work. The injured and bodies were taken to the People’s Medical University Hospital where doctors and paramedical staff were summoned in emergency.

The two teachers were identified as Ameen and Qari Bashir while the driver was identified as Sachal Korai. Six children were later shifted to Karachi for treatment.

A large number of people from Nawabshah, Daulatpur, Sakrand and Qazi Ahmed arrived at the hospital for blood donation. Some hearbreaking scenes were witnessed at the hospital where the relatives of children were in a hysterical state.

PPP leader Faryal Talpur, in her personal capacity, announced Rs500,000 for the parents of each child who had died in the accident.

President Mamnoon Hussain, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, MQM chief Altaf Hussain and the PPP patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed shock and condolences over the death of young students in the road accident in Nawabshah.

In their separate messages, they prayed that Almighty Allah rest the departed souls in eternal peace and grant courage to the bereaved families to bear the loss with equanimity. They also prayed for the early recovery of the injured students.