A devastating highway accident has claimed the lives of at least 32 people in south-western Pakistan, after an overloaded passenger bus careened off a mountain road and fell into a deep ravine on Friday morning. Sixteen additional passengers were injured in the crash, which unfolded in the Dana Sar mountain range straddling the border of Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces at approximately 8:00 a.m. local time, as the vehicle traveled north from Quetta to Peshawar.
Local health authorities at Zhob Hospital confirmed that 48 people, including the bus driver, were packed onto the vehicle at the time of the collision. Initial reporting points to two key contributing factors to the disaster: a potential steering system malfunction that caused the driver to lose control of the bus, and severe overcrowding. Shahid Rind, spokesperson for Balochistan’s chief minister, noted that the bus had taken on extra passengers from a second bus that had suffered a breakdown earlier in the journey, pushing the passenger count well beyond the vehicle’s intended capacity.
Emergency response teams including dozens of first responders and ambulances were dispatched immediately to the remote crash site, but difficult, rugged mountain terrain slowed rescue and recovery operations significantly. Images captured at the scene show the passenger bus heavily mangled after the fall. All injured survivors have been transported to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in Zhob, located roughly 68 kilometers from the crash site, and the bodies of deceased victims have also been moved to the facility, where they will be transferred to the victims’ home communities via ambulance.
Top Pakistani political leaders have publicly expressed grief over the high loss of life. Both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif issued statements of condolence following the crash. Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti wrote on the social platform X that he was “deeply saddened” by the news of the accident. He extended his condolences to grieving family members of the deceased, offered prayers for a fast recovery for injured passengers, and ordered a formal inquiry into the root causes of the crash, confirming that emergency medical support was already being delivered to all hurt survivors. Official investigations into the crash remain ongoing to confirm the exact sequence of events that led to the disaster.