Two separate bus crashes hours apart in Pakistan left at least 36 people dead and dozens more injured, officials said.
The first happened when a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from Iraq through Iran fell from a highway into a ravine in southwest Pakistan, killing at least 12 people and injuring 32 others, police and officials said.
The driver lost control on the Makran coastal highway when the brakes failed while passing through Lasbela district in Baluchistan province, local police chief Qazi Sabir said.
Hours later, 24 people were killed when a bus fell into a ravine in the Kahuta district of the eastern Punjab province, police and officials said.
The bus was heading to the Pakistan-administrated disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir — claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan — when it fell from the Panna bridge in the Kahuta district, said Sardar Waheed, a senior government official, adding that heavy machinery was used to lift the wreckage to ensure no one was trapped underneath.
The crashes on Sunday occurred days after 28 Pakistani pilgrims were killed in a bus crash in neighboring Iran while heading to Iraq. A Pakistani military plane flew the bodies of the victims home on Saturday to be buried in the southern Sindh province.
