Sylhet road crash kills 15 workers

Staff Reporter  :
At least 15 people were killed and 16 others injured in a tragic road crash when a truck rammed into a pickup van on the Sylhet-Dhaka Highway in Nazir Bazar area of Dakkhin Surma upazila of Sylhet district on Wednesday morning.

Police and hospital sources said, the fatal mishap occurred around 5:30am as the sand-laden truck hit the pickup carrying 25-30 construction workers in Kutubpur area, leaving 11 people dead on the spot. Four critically injured workers died at a hospital.

Md Samsuddoha, officer-in-charge of Dakkhin Surma police station, said nine of the deceased have been identified. They are: Harish Mia (50), Sourav, (25), Sadhu Mia (40), Taif Noor (45), Sagar (18), Rashid Mia (40), Dulal Mia (55), Badsha Mia (45) and Wahid Ali (40). The identities of other five victims could not be known immediately.
Vehicular movement on the Sylhet-Dhaka highway remained suspended for three hours following the accident.

It was known that 12 of the victims out of 15 are from Sunamganj district. Among them, eight people are from Bhatipara village of Dirai upazila. All the deceased worked as masons in Sylhet.
After the incident, atmosphere in the area became very heavy with cries of relatives of the killed. Such a heartbreaking scene was also created in Bhatipara village of Sunamganj’s Dirai upazila.
Shamsuddoha said 16 injured people were admitted to Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College for treatment.
Meanwhile, the handover process of the bodies of the 15 victims has started without autopsies.

Under the supervision of Additional District Magistrate Imrul Hasan, the bodies were handed over to the families of the deceased from Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital morgue at 2pm on Wednesday.
The district administration announced that it will give Tk 20,000 to each deceased’s family and Tk 10,000 to each injured as compensation .

Sylhet Metropolitan Police Additional Commissioner Masud Rana said: “The bodies are being handed over to the families of the victims without postmortems. All the victims were construction workers. They were going to Osmaninagar early in the morning.”
As many as 7,713 people have been killed in 6,829

road accidents that occurred in the country in 2022.
That accidents also left 12,615 people injured, said a report by the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) released on Saturday.
Besides, at least 564 people were killed and 1,097 injured in 486 road accidents throughout the country in only March this year, the report said.