At least 18 Pakistanis, including 12 children, were killed in a bus fire as they journeyed home after fleeing catastrophic monsoon flooding, officials and rescue workers said Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan has been hit by unprecedented monsoon rains this year, putting a third of the nation underwater, displacing eight million people, and causing $28 billion worth of devastation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the waters slowly recede, thousands of the displaced — many living in ramshackle tent cities — are travelling back to their sodden homes to remake their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police said the passengers died when the fire broke out overnight on a northbound bus outside the city of Karachi, where they settled after fleeing one of the worst flood-hit areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They were going back to their village when they were overtaken by this accident,” Vinod Kumar, a district health official present at the scene, told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Apparently, the fire broke out in the air-conditioning system of the bus but investigations will reveal the real cause,” said police officer Hashim Brohi, who was also present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan has a dismal record of fatal traffic accidents due to badly maintained vehicles, poor roads, reckless driving and poorly trained emergency services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The historic floods across the nation — which have killed 1,700 — have been linked to climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 18 Pakistanis, including 12 children, were killed in a bus fire as they journeyed home after fleeing catastrophic monsoon flooding, officials and rescue workers said Thursday. Pakistan has been hit by unprecedented monsoon rains this year, putting a third of the nation underwater, displacing eight million people, and causing $28 billion worth of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5144,5719,287,9331,3862,5241,5846,6159,5787,12634,10598,9566,9515,11973,3042,421,10917,7398,5594,9539,3954,594],"class_list":["post-26472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accident","tag-bus","tag-children","tag-city","tag-climate-change","tag-died","tag-displaced","tag-fire","tag-flood","tag-health","tag-homes","tag-karachi","tag-killed","tag-one","tag-pakistan","tag-police","tag-poor","tag-rains","tag-traffic","tag-victims","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50815,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26472\/revisions\/50815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}