LAKKI MARWAT: At least 12 persons were killed and 22 others injured in two separate road accidentsinKarakandHaripur districts on Tuesday, police and rescue officials said.

In the first incident, 10 people, including three women and two children, were killed and nine others received injuries when a trailer and a passenger coach collided near Ghundakai area of Karak district.

A Rescue 1122 official in Karak said that the illfated coach was going to Peshawar from North Waziristan district.

He said that a carelesslydriven truck rammed into the coach on the PeshawarKarachi Highway. After the accident, many passengers travelling in the coachdied instantly, while others remained trapped in the vehicle, the official said.

He said that the rescue teams led by district emergency officer Atif Sardar rushed to the site.

Police and district administration officials also reached the place and supervised the rescue operation and transporting of the injured to hospitals.

The rescue official said their teams pulled out bodies and injured from the severely damaged coach and shifted them to the District Headquarters Hospital.

He said the deceased and injured belonged to North Waziristan district. He said the passengers, who lost their lives in the accident, included Naseemullah, Pir Mala Khan, Nek Mali Khan, Bashirullah, Masta Meena and Masti Khan, and two unidentified women and two children.

The official identified the injured as Jamshed, Yousaf, Mohammad Arif, Jamil, Sajjad, Nizam Khan and Ammad Shah and two unidentified women.Meanwhile, two passengers were killed and 13 others, including three foreign nationals and a teenage girl, were injured, when a Rawalpindi-bound passenger bus veered off the road and fell into a drain near ShahMaqsoodInterchange some six kilometres from the Haripur city on Hazara Motorway on Tuesday.

The cause of the accident, the police said was reckless driving, while the injured passengers claimed the accident occurred whenthe driver dozed off.

Police quoted the passengers as saying that the bus left Gilgit during the early hours of Tuesday and when it reached near Shah Maqsood interchange of Hazara Motorway at around 6.30am, the driver lost control of the vehicle, plunging it into dr ain, leaving 18 passengers injured.

The residents and rescue workers removed the injured to Haripur Trauma Centre, where two of the eight injured weredeclared as brought dead.

Five of them sustained serious injuries and were shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad.

The deceased were identified as Masroor, 55, a resident of Yaseen Gilgit, and Zameer Abbas, 42, resident of Astor.

Among the injured were three foreigners including John, a Czech Republic citizen, and two Chinese, namely Zu Chongzhi and Lyu Li Dong.