KARACHI, Dec 23: Twelve people died and 14 others suffered injuries, four of them seriously, when a recklessly-driven minibus, they were travelling in, fell off the Malir bridge, on Sunday morning.

Eyewitnesses said the driver was carelessly driving the minibus in a zigzag motion. The minibus went out of his control when he tried to save two motorcycles, moving ahead of the minibus on the bridge, and the minibus fell off breaking the railing of the bridge.

The dead and injured were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre by Edhi ambulances where seven dead were identified as Sajan, Mohammad Bakhtawar Khan, Abdul Sattar, Abdur Rahim, Mohammad Yusuf, Sher Mohammad and Habibur Rehman. Four others remained unidentified. Seriously injured Rashid Hussain was moved to a private hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Those injured were identified as Tariq, 30; Fawad, 30; driver Islamuddin, 30; Fayyaz, 35; Rambil, 40; Sakina, 35; Ashraf, 35; Abdul Kaleem, 40; Mehboob, 8; and the names of five could not be ascertained.

An injured passenger, Ashraf, who got to the ill-fated minibus at Daud Chowrangi and witnessed the scene which led to the gory incident, said: “The minibus was moving fast from Qaudiabad to Sohrab Goth when a truck appeared from the opposite side overtaking a vehicle moving ahead of it. The minibus driver took the vehicle on his extreme left where two motorcycles were moving ahead of the minibus. The driver tried to halt the minibus with a screech of brakes but he lost his control and then we flew into the air and landed with a bang. Then I don’t know what happened next.”

Another injured, Tariq, a labourer and resident of Future Colony, who got into the minibus at Daud Chowrangi for Gulshan-i- Iqbal, said: “The driver of the minibus was driving fast in a zigzag movement overtaking the vehicles. He tried to save two motorcycles, travelling ahead of the minibus on Malir bridge when he lost his control over the steering and I heard a bang. What came next, I don’t know as I was not in my senses.”

The conductor of ill-fated minibus of route D-7 (PE-0088), 16-year-old Hikmat Ali said it was his first day on the minibus. He could not speak further as he was in a semi-conscious state. The minibus driver Islamuddin was not in a state of uttering any statement as he was badly injured.

Ali and Hasan, labourers at a nearby hydrant beneath the Malir bridge told Dawn that they were present at the hydrant when they heard a bang and saw the minibus falling from the bridge. The minibus fell upside down on the rough and rocky surface. The passengers were crying and yelling for help.

Ali said: “I and my colleague tied the minibus with hard ropes and dragged it by two trucks to turn it around. In the meantime, Edhi ambulances reached the spot.”

He said the people from adjoining areas came to rescue the passengers. As the spot was inaccessible for vehicles, the rescue workers took the injured and bodies to the ambulances parked near the riverbed.

A visit to the spot showed that the vehicular traffic was jammed and only two traffic policemen were controlling the traffic movement on the bridge. The people on the spot said a police mobile of Malir City police station came to inspect the scene and went away thereafter. Since, there was no police mobile.

The people were peeping into the wreckage of the minibus, the seats of which were blood stained and the belongings of the passengers were littered in and around.

At the JPMC, the doctors at the hospital said that emergency was declared at the hospital and injured were being provided with prompt treatment. The medicolegal officials were also performing postmortems on the bodies so that their relatives could take the bodies without any delay.

However, the doctors at the hospital complained that the relevant police station sent only two police officials to complete the legal formalities and paper work. The two officials were not adequate to complete the formalities without delay.

The doctors said the police officials took hours to complete the legal formalities which had irritated the relatives of the dead as they could not take the bodies away without the permission of the police officials.