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Burn victims overwhelm Pakistani hospitals after tanker fire kills 146

Pakistani hospitals on Monday struggled to treat scores of severely burned victims of a fuel tanker explosion that killed at least 146 people, as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew back from an overseas trip to visit the injured.

 

More than 118 people were injured in the explosion in the eastern province of Punjab, which came as people gathered to collect leaking fuel after the tanker overturned on Sunday, government officials and rescue workers said.

 

It was one of several deadly events to mar the run-up to Monday's Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. At least 88 people died in Islamist militant bombings in two cities on Friday, including 75 in a market in the northwestern city of Parachinar.

 

A burst tyre apparently caused the speeding fuel tanker to overturn on a sharp bend on a highway on the outskirts of the city of Bahawalpur, provincial spokesman Malik Muhammed Ahmed Khan said.

 

It was not clear what triggered the fireball but on Sunday, a spokesman for rescue services said someone was believed to have lit a cigarette.

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.26.17, 19:34