KA RACHI: At least five people, including a woman, were killed and 27 other passengers injured when a fast-moving bus hit a concrete pillar of the Sassui Toll Plaza on the National Highway on Tuesday morning, of ficials said.

While overtaking another vehicle, the fast-moving bus was about to hit an oil tanker head-on when its driver swerved sharply and col-lided with the concrete structure of the toll plaza, said the police while quoting some witnesses.

Four of the dead were identified as Raees Fatima, Anwar Saeed, Mohammad Sajid and Shahjehan.

`Usually traffic turns slow on such spots [toll and security posts] but that bus was in so high speed that it almost hit an oil tanker coming from the opposite direction in an attempt to overtake another vehicle. In the process,the driver lost the control and hit the concrete structure of the toll plaza,` said Malir SSP Rao Anwar.

He said the bus was destroyed in the accident and it took more than an hour to cut its wreckage and pull out the injured victims and bodies.

`We retrieved five bodies and 27 injured, including the driver.

They were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC). The driver is being treated at the hospital,` he added.

According to passengers, speed limit violations by public transport buses are very common on the KarachiBadin route.

The city has recently witnessed a sudden rise in fatal road accidentswhichisbeing blamed on poor infrastructure and sheer violations of rules by public transport operators. On Feb 3, two women were killed and another person was injured in an accident. Later on Feb 9, an unidentified man and three female students of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology were killed when a bus overturned at a stop near Baitul Mukarram mosque.

Dr Seemi Jamali, the head of the JPMC emergency section, said that five people were brought dead to the health facility. Most of the injured suffered fractures and head injuries, she said, adding that a few of them were in critical condition.

`The impact of the accident was so strong that it lef t several bruises on the bodies of the victims. Several injured also suffered bone fractures due to force of the bus hit the concrete structure,` she said.

The police said they had not yet registered the case, as they were still recording the statements of the injured and witnesses. The investigators had also sought details of the bus and its owner from the department concerned to check if it was meeting all legal formalities or not, they added.