Seven killed as jeep falls up to 1,500 feet near Muzaffarabad on landslide-hit road

Seven people were killed on Sunday 25 October when a passenger jeep plunged down a mountainside near Sathra Podemar village on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Dawn reported. Everyone on board died at the scene.

The jeep left Nakka Shakkar Pattiyan village for Seri Darra, north-east of Muzaffarabad, at around noon and had travelled barely three kilometres when the driver lost control on a stretch damaged by landslides, police told Dawn. The vehicle rolled several times and came to rest an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 feet below the road.

Among the dead were the driver and a father with his sons. Residents recovered the bodies before Rescue 1122 teams arrived, and police handed them to relatives for burial. "Their bodies were scattered across the accident site," Muzaffarabad Additional Deputy Commissioner Zeeshan Nisar told Dawn.

Second deadly fall in two days

On Saturday, four children from one family were killed and four people injured when their vehicle went into a ravine about 500 metres deep in the Neelum Valley. In May, four people, two of them women, died when a passenger jeep fell into a rocky streambed in the same area as Sunday's crash. Dawn noted questions about the fitness of ageing, locally modified jeeps that carry passengers on these routes, and about how transport safety rules are enforced.

If you travel AJK's mountain roads

• Check the road first: after rain, landslide-hit stretches are the most dangerous. Ask locally or check district administration updates before setting off.
• Choose the vehicle: avoid overloaded or visibly altered jeeps, and ask the driver to slow down on broken sections.
• Emergency number: Rescue 1122 operates in Azad Kashmir.

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