Twin road mishaps leave 25 dead

MUZAFFARABAD,—A bus with 50 people on board plunged into a river gorge in a quake-stricken Muzaffarabad on Sunday, an aid group said. The bus fell several feet into the Neelum River about 25 miles from Muzaffarabad, said Ghulam Ullah Azad, a spokesman for the Islamic charity Jamat-e-Dawa.
Azzad said the crash resulted in some deaths, and that United Nations and government rescuers had been notified. “Our people have reached the site of the accident and are trying to pull out bodies,” Azad said. “We don’t know whether there are any survivors.”
Muzaffarabad and its surroundings were devastated by the Oct. 8 earthquake, which killed more than 86,000 people. Many roads were blocked by landslides or disappeared over the sides of cliffs, making land travel in the area extremely dangerous.
Two separate bus crashes killed at least 21 people in quake-stricken northern Pakistan on Sunday, a police official said, posing new difficulties for emergency workers in a region where more than 86,000 people died in last month’s disaster.—Online/INP