10 killed, 34 injured in separate road accidents in J&K

Ten people, including two women, were killed and 34 others injured in three separate road accidents in Udhampur, Kishtwar and Ramban districts of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said Saturday.

A private bus, carrying nearly 40 people to Kashmir, skidded off a hilly road and rolled down into a deep gorge at Chandeh village near Surinsar in Udhampur district around midnight when its driver lost control over the wheels, the officials said.

They said the driver had reportedly taken the interior route to dodge traffic police in view of the restrictions on the main Jammu-Srinagar national highway which opened for traffic from Jammu to Srinagar on Saturday after five days of closure due to landslides caused by rain and snowfall.

Five persons Mohammad Iqbal Barkat and Manzoor Ahmad (both residents of Shopian district), Farooq Ahmad and Asiya Bashir (Bandipora) and Javed Ahmad (Budgam) were found dead while 32 were rescued and rushed to Government Medical College hospital in Jammu for treatment, the officials said.

They said one of the injured, Ghulam Ahmad Mir of Baramulla, was declared dead by doctors on arrival while five others were stated to be "critical".

In another accident, the officials said three persons, including a young woman, were killed and three were injured when a cab fell into a deep gorge at Dadpeth-Mugalmaidan in Kishtwar district around 9.40 am Saturday.

The cab was on way to Kishtwar when the accident happened, the officials said.

A driver, Gurdev Singh of Jammu, was killed in a head-on collision between two trucks near Ramban on Jammu-Srinagar national highway this morning, the officials said.