Daily Times

An ambulance with six people aboard crashed into a truck in Shariatpur district, some 101 km south of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, early on Tuesday. The collision was so massive that all six people including the driver died on the spot. Rescuers say they had to carry out the rescue work for hours to rescue the bodies from the mangled ambulance. Md Selim Miah, deputy director of the district’s Fire Service and Civil Defence, told journalists that the Dhaka-bound ambulance rammed into the compressed natural gas truck at around 4:20 a.m. local time due to poor visibility caused by dense fog. The patient and ambulance driver and a helper were among the deceased, he said, adding that their identities could not be known immediately. The ambulance was taking the patient to a hospital in Dhaka and crashed into the truck coming from the opposite direction. Bangladesh has a higher fatality rate for road accidents in the world due to shoddy highways, poorly maintained vehicles, violation of traffic rules by inept drivers and lack of monitoring by the traffic department. A total of 10,858 people were killed, and 12,875 others injured in 7,617 road, railway and waterway accidents across the country in 2022, according to a report of Bangladesh Passengers’ Welfare Association, a local organization.