KARAK, Nov 24: Fifteen people, two women and a girl among them, were killed and 25 others injured when a bus rammed into a truck on the Indus Highway here on Saturday.

The bus with at least 50 passengers on board was going from Karachi to Peshawar when it collided with the truck near Speena Banda, a dangerous mountainous portion of the Indus Highway.

Police said that seven passengers were killed on the spot while eight died in the hospital.

The bus and the truck were going in the same direction.

A police patrol reached the spot soon after the accident and took the dead and the injured to the district headquarters hospital in Karak.

The police said the majority of victims belonged to different areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and some hailed from Sindh.

AFP adds: The driver lost control as he was overtaking the truck on a sharp bend when another bus appeared from the opposite direction, local administration chief Sajjad Khan said by telephone.

“The driver tried to avert a collision with the bus and smashed into the truck which he had been overtaking,” Khan said while quoting wounded passengers.

“We have one or two fatal accidents every week because drivers while descending usually lose control,” he said.