Fatal bus plunge adds to quake misery

A bus with 50 people on board plunged from a bridge into a river gorge in quake-stricken north-eastern Pakistan today, killing at least three people, police said.

The bus fell several yards into the Neelum River at Ghori, about 10 miles from Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistan-controlled section of Kashmir, the reports sad.

Three bodies have so far been pulled from the wreck, said Shahid Hassan Quereshi, a top Kashmiri police official.

Ghulam Ullah Azad, a spokesman for the Islamic charity Jamat-e-Dawad, said members of his group were the first on the scene and had begun pulling out bodies.

“We don’t now whether there are any survivors,” he said.

Azad said about 50 people had been travelling on the bus. Quereshi said he didn’t know how many were on board.

Muzaffarabad and its surroundings were devastated by the October 8 earthquake, which killed more than 86,000 people. Many roads were blocked by landslides or disappeared over the sides of cliffs, making land travel in the area extremely dangerous.