HAFIZABAD/FAISALABAD - As many as 24 people were killed and 151 injured in several road accidents caused by dense fog in the precincts of Hafizabad and Faisalabad districts yesterday.

In a gruesome accident which occurred near Hafizabad on M-2 Motorway near village Chountra, about 40km from Hafizabad, early Thursday morning, 13 people were killed and 60 injured, 30 of them critically.

According to Rescue 1122 and Motorway Police, the accident took place due to rash driving and poor visibility of only 10 meters owing to the dense fog. The Motorway remained closed for about an hour due to the rescue operation.

Reportedly, more than a dozen vehicles carrying 146 Lahore-bound passengers rammed into two trucks near Chountra village. As a result, some vehicles overturned.

Owing to a delayed rescue operation by the Motorway police, nine passengers died on the spot while four breathed their last in Pindi Bhattian Civil Hospital and Allied Hospital Faisalabad. However, ambulances of Rescue-1122 along with the staff of the health department of Hafizabad, Pindi BHattian, Sukheke and Sheikhpura reached the spot after about an hour and shifted the bodies and the injured to Trauma Centre, Hafizabad, DHQ Hospital Hafizabad, THQ Hospital Pindi Bhattian, DHQ Hospital Sheikhpura and Allied Hospital Faisalabad. Emergency was declared in all the hospitals.

Most of the dead and injured are stated to be members of Tableeghi Jamaat, belonging to Nowshera, Peshawar and other towns of KP.

Meanwhile, 11 people were killed and 18 critically injured in different road accidents caused by poor visibility in the jurisdiction of Faisalabad district.

In the first accident, two cars collided with each other at Adda Pansara near Jhang Road. As a result, a youth along with his mother was killed on the spot while his father Iqbal and two brothers, Humayum and Ghulam, were critically injured and rushed to hospital. In the second accident, Shaista and her son Dr Adnan were critically injured. In the third accident, Police Constable Sohail who was injured near Chiniot died in Allied Hospital Faisalabad.

In the fourth accident which occurred at Jali Tarhana in the limits of police station Ghar, seven-year-old Ismail was killed when a speeding tractor-trailer ran him over.

Ashfaq of 101-GB, 11-year-old Rameez of Muridwala and Awais of 427-GB were also injured in separate road accidents and shifted to Allied Hospital Faisalabad where they succumbed to their injuries. In a collision between a speeding bus and a tractor-trailer near Pindi Bhatian on Motorway, Tahir Khan of Noushehra, Kafayat Haq of Akora Khattak, Muhammad Nawaz of Lahore and Tahoo were killed while Sharafat, Jahanzeb, Arshad, Waqas, Sugra Bibi, Tahira and three other passengers were critically injured and shifted to hospital.