Eleven people were killed when a passenger van veered off a mountain road and plunged into the Yasin River in northern Pakistan on Thursday night, rescue officials and police said. The crash happened in Ghizer district in Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote mountain region where the river runs through a deep valley on the road from Gilgit to Yasin Valley.

The van was carrying passengers home to Yasin Valley when the driver lost control and the vehicle went into the river, local police official Mohammad Afzal said. The Associated Press reported that a search and rescue operation continued into the early hours of Friday, and that all 11 bodies and the injured had been taken to a nearby hospital.

What happened on the Gilgit to Yasin road

Police said the van was travelling from Gilgit towards Yasin Valley when it went into the river near Morkah Bridge, according to Dawn's reporting from the scene. Geo News placed the crash near Noh Bridge, on the same stretch of road leading to Hundur, a village in the upper part of Yasin Valley. The exact cause of the crash has not been established, and police said an investigation was under way.

The dead and the injured were all residents of Yasin Valley, police said. Dawn reported that rescue teams first recovered 10 bodies, including two women, before the death toll rose to 11, including an infant. The victims had been on their way home when the van left the road.

The crash happened at about 8pm on Thursday, 12 November, according to local accounts. Rescue teams, police and local volunteers worked through the night at the riverbank to recover the dead and search for anyone else who might have been in the vehicle.

Rescue effort and the injured

Reports differed on the number of people hurt. Police said in their updated account that two people were injured, while the Associated Press reported three injured. The injured were taken to hospital, and Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Amjad Hussain expressed his deep sorrow over the accident and instructed the authorities to ensure the injured received the best possible medical care.

The chief minister also directed the district administration, rescue agencies and health officials to make sure the injured were moved quickly and that no negligence occurred during the rescue operation.

Mountain roads in Gilgit-Baltistan are narrow, steep and often unlit, and rescue work after a crash into a fast-flowing river is slow and dangerous, particularly at night. Divers and rescue workers continued searching the river into Friday morning to make sure nobody else had been aboard.

A familiar danger on mountain roads

Road accidents are common in Pakistan because of poor road conditions, inadequate enforcement of traffic laws and unsafe driving, particularly in mountainous areas, the Associated Press noted. Only last week, a bus collided with a truck in eastern Pakistan, killing 11 people and injuring 33 others.

Gilgit-Baltistan has seen a series of fatal crashes on its mountain roads in recent years, with vehicles plunging into rivers and ravines after drivers lose control on sharp bends. Each such crash renews questions about road safety, vehicle fitness and enforcement on routes that are the only link between remote valleys and the region's towns.

For the families of Yasin Valley, the loss is immediate and personal. Eleven people who set out on an ordinary evening journey home did not return, and a small mountain community is now mourning its dead while police try to establish what sent the van off the road.