11 kids killed in Jammu and Kashmir bus mishap: Vehicle slides into gorge

Srinagar: Eleven students including nine females were killed and eight others wounded, when the minibus they were travelling in skidded off the road and plunged into a deep gorge in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Shopian district on Thursday.

The students enrolled at a private computer training institute in Surankote area of frontier Poonch district were heading towards Dhobijan in neighbouring Shopian for day picnic when the mishap took place, the officials said.

The seriously injured students have been brought to a Srinagar hospital for specialised treatment. The hospital sources said that the condition of the five of them is “very critical.”

The police said that the accident took place along the historic Mughal Road at Lal Ghulam near the 11,434- feet-high “Peer Ki Galli” mountain pass in the Pir Panjal Range which connects Poonch with Shopian.

An official spokesman said the police and district (Shopian) administration along with the volunteers of Rahmat-e-Aalmeen Society (a local NGO) started rescue and relief operations.

The injured were first taken to the district hospital in Shopian and later the seriously injured among them were shifted to Srinagar, he said.

Jammu and Kashmir’s governor Satya Pal Malik expressed grief over the loss of lives and, in a condolence message, conveyed his sympathies to the bereaved families.