ISLAMABAD, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Twenty people were killed and two others injured in a road accident in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh on Monday morning, officials said.
Rai Mazhar Iqbal, assistant superintendent of police, said the accident took place when a truck loaded with coal fell at a passenger van near Shah Hussain area of Khairpur, a district in Sindh.
Rescuers and police personnel, who rushed to the site following the accident, had to cut the pressed structure of the van to pull out the bodies and the injured.
Ghulam Soomro, the medical superintendent of the district hospital of Khairpur, said that rescue teams have brought 17 bodies and five injured to the hospital. Among the five injured, three of them succumbed to their injuries.
The passenger van was heading to district Sukkur from Khairpur when the accident happened.
Police registered a case against the truck driver who fled from the site after the accident.
According to the police officer, the accident happened when the overloaded truck attempted to overtake the passenger vehicle, but the driver lost control of the truck and it overturned at the van.
According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, around 9,000 road accidents were reported every year since 2011 in the country, killing more than 4,500 people on average annually.
Traffic police officials said that 90 percent of the accidents in Pakistan are caused by human error.
