At Lest 14 Killed, 35 Injured in Road Accident in Bangladesh

Dhaka (ANTARA/Xinhua-0ANA) - At least 14 people were killed and more than 30 others were injured when a passenger bus veered off the road and fell into a ditch in Bangladesh's central Madaripur district, some 63 km south of capital Dhaka, on Friday morning. Nurur Rahman, the district's administration chief, told Xinhua "the passenger bus felt into a road side ditch, leaving 8 passengers dead on the spot and about 30-35 were injured." "Six of the injured died on the way to local hospitals," he added. The accident occurred as its driver lost control over the steering and plunged the vehicle into a ditch on Dhaka-Barisal, a divisional city in southern Bangladesh, highway at about 10:30 a.m. local time. Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates for road accidents in the world due mainly to shoddy highways, poorly maintained vehicles, violation of traffic rules by inept drivers and lack of monitoring of the traffic department. According to a study of Accident Research Center of Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology, some 10,000 to 12, 000 people are killed in road accidents in Bangladesh every year, of which about 75 percent fatalities occur in rural areas.(*)