A major road traffic accident in western Bangladesh has left at least four people dead and upwards of twenty-five others injured after a passenger transport bus veered off the road and plunged into a wayside ditch on Saturday morning.
The incident occurred in the Khoksa upazila of the Kushtia district, directly ahead of the Shialdangi Mosque. Local authorities report that the vehicle—a coach operated by Tanhha Paribahan—was carrying approximately fifty passengers at the time of the crash.
According to highway police, the coach was travelling en route from Rajbari towards Kushtia when the driver was forced into a series of evasive manoeuvres. Speaking on the incident, Abu Obayed, the Officer-in-Charge of the Kushtia Highway Police Station, noted that the coach driver initially swerved to avoid a collision with a local van.
“In a desperate bid to miss the van, the driver lost control of the vehicle just as a heavy lorry laden with sand emerged from the opposite direction,” Officer Obayed explained. Caught between the two hazards, the coach careened off the tarmac and overturned into the adjacent ditch.
Emergency services and local medical teams were deployed rapidly to the scene to pull survivors from the wreckage. Dr Md Ariful Haque, the Khoksa Upazila Health and Family Planning Officer, confirmed that two casualties were pronounced dead at the scene and their bodies recovered to the local health complex. The facility also received twenty injured passengers for immediate triage.
As the scale of the emergency grew, four victims identified as being in critical condition were blue-lighted to the more specialised Kushtia 250-bed General Hospital.
However, despite the best efforts of clinical staff, two of those transferred patients succumbed to their injuries shortly after arrival. Dr Iqbal Hasan, the Resident Medical Officer at Kushtia General Hospital, confirmed that the newly deceased included one woman and one man. The remaining two transferred patients are currently undergoing emergency treatment.
The identities of the four deceased individuals have yet to be formally established by the authorities. Medical personnel across both treating facilities have warned that the death toll may yet rise, as several of the holidaymakers and commuters remaining in hospital are currently fighting for their lives with severe injuries. An investigation into the exact sequence of events leading up to the crash is expected to follow.
