MUZAFFARABAD: Five people, including a woman and her teenage son, were killed and six others were injured when a passenger jeep they were travelling in plunged into the icy Neelum River on Friday, police and witnesses said.

The jeep had left Muzaffarabad on Thursday night for Halmat, the fourth last village of the Neelum valley located at a distance of around 200 kilometres here.

When it was barely three kilometres away from its destination somewhere between Sonar and Sardari villages, it met with the accident at about 8:4am apparently because of some technical fault, said Raja Mohammad Aslam, a police official in the area.

At the time of the accident, 12 people, including the driver, were on board the vehicle, he said.

`While negotiating a curve on a steep portion of the road near a spot known as Thairri Mor, the vehicle went some eight feet in the reverse direction and fell 300 feet down into the river,` Mohammad Afzal, a resident of Halmat, told Dawn from the site of the accident by telephone.

Police official Afzal said all passengers were trapped inside the vehicle and when it was pulled towards the riverbank, four of them had died and seven were wounded.

One of the passengers was unhun.

He identified the deceased as Hajira Bibi, 38, wife of Mushtaq, and her 18-year-old son Nisar Ahmed from Halmat and 10-year old Amir, son of Sain, of Phulawai village. The two other deceased, Darvesh Khan from Chitral KP and Shaukat Abbas from Jhang (Punjab), were working as contractors with an army unit in the area.

The injured included Sain, his spouse Bibi Ayesha, and Maulvi Abdul Mannan of Phulawai, Riyaz of Sundas village, Abdus Samad of Halmat and driver Nazakat Qayyum of Hanthi. The condition of Maulvi Mannan was critical.

Residents of the remote hilly areas have been complaining that poor condition of the road posed serious threat to the lives of passengers and commuters.

On March 21, nine people were killed and five others wounded after a jeep plunged into a watercourse from the narrow hilly road in Khilana Valley towards the southwest of Muzaffarabad.