Overcrowded bus plunges into ravine in Pakistan, killing 40

A speeding, overcrowded passenger bus plunged from a highway into a rocky ravine in Dana Sar in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 40 people and injuring eight others. Officials said the coach was carrying 48 passengers on the route from Quetta to Islamabad when it went out of control near the border of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

Shahid Rind, a spokesperson for the Balochistan government, said the bus was also carrying passengers transferred from another bus that had broken down, adding to the overcrowding before the crash. Rescue teams, including motorway police and emergency responders, rushed to the remote Sherani district area and moved the injured and the dead to hospitals, where local officials said some of the injured were in critical condition.

Authorities launched an investigation into the cause of the crash as crews worked in the steep terrain of Dana Sar. The accident unfolded in one of Pakistan’s most difficult mountain corridors, where long-distance buses regularly travel through rough road conditions and remote stretches with limited enforcement.

The crash also revived scrutiny of Pakistan’s chronic road-safety failure. The World Health Organization’s Pakistan country profile is part of the United Nations road-safety monitoring framework for 2021 to 2030, and analysts have long warned that the country’s fatality counts are badly undercounted. WHO-estimated road deaths were around 28,000 in 2021, far above national statistics, highlighting major data gaps that make the scale of the crisis harder to measure and harder to fix.

Overloading, speeding, poor roads, weak vehicle fitness standards and lax transport enforcement continue to feed the toll. Even after repeated promises following earlier fatal crashes, buses, trucks and coaches still move through the same network of dangerous highways, where a single mechanical failure, a reckless maneuver or a packed vehicle can turn a long-haul trip into a mass-casualty disaster.