Kabul-Jalalabad road accidents claim 200 lives

 JALALABAD (PAN-Jalalabad highway during the outgoing Afghan calendar year, when another 5,000 sustained injuries, officials said on Wednesday.

Nangarhar Civil Hospital Director Dr Humayun Zaheer confirmed receiving about 5,000 people wounded in traffic accidents during the period.  Seventeen of them had succumbed to their injuries, he added.

“We have been brought wounded people and dead bodies from Sarobi district in Kabul and parts of Nangarhar,” he said of those registered causalities. “Some might be taken to other medical facilities in the city,” said Zaheer, who claimed there had been a considerable increase in traffic accidents on the route.

He said carelessness and reckless driving had been a result of increasing casualties on the narrow road.

But police spokesman Col. Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal disputed the figures, saying 121 people had died and only 81 others sustained injuries in road accidents over the past 12 months.

He cited information from the traffic police headquarters, but explained the difference in figures could be a result of unregistered accidents.

Thirty-three people were killed and 43 others were wounded over the past year on the Kabul-Jalalabad highway in Laghman alone, said traffic police official Abdul Samad.

Another 15 lost their lives and 25 more were wounded in Sarobi district of Kabul, the town’s administrative chief, Shahghasi said.

nz/ma

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