At least nine members of a wedding party, seven of them family members and close relatives, were killed and 10 others injured in a head-on collision between a bus and a microbus on the Dhaka-Mawa highway at Shologhar under Srinagar upazila in Munshiganj district on Friday afternoon.

All the deceased, six of whom died on the spot, were passengers of the microbus that was heading towards Dhaka to join the wedding ceremony.

The dead were bridegroom Rubel Byapari’s father Abdur Rashid Byapari, 70, sister Liza, 24, nieces Renu, 12, and Tabassum, 6, uncle Keramat Byapari, 71, and sister-in-law Runa Akhter, 24, nephew Tahsan, 5, neighbour Mofijul Molla, 60, and microbus driver Billal, 28.

They were all inhabitants of Kanaksar village under Louhajang upazila in Munshiganj.

The accident happened a day after the public transport drivers and workers resumed their work on an assurance from the home minister of relaxing the implementation of the Road Transport Act 2018.

They had remained absent from their work for a week in protest against the ‘high amount’ of fines and ‘harsh’ punishments for breaching traffic rules.

Witnesses and police said that the Mawa-bound Shwadhin Paribahan bus bearing number Dhaka Metro Ba 14-8194 from Dhaka collided head-on with a Dhaka-bound microbus with number Dhaka Metro Cha 15-5566 from Louhajang on the highway in Shologhar area with a big bang at about 2:00pm.

Locals and workers of the nearby four-lane project, hearing the bang and cries of passengers, ran to the spot and began to rescue the victims, they added.

They found the microbus and the front side of the bus smashed, they said.

On information, police and fire service and civil defence rescuers rushed to the spot and joined hands in rescuing the injured and recovering the bodies from the affected vehicles and sending the injured ones to hospitals, they said. As the traffic movement came to a halt on the busy road, they said, the police and fire service personnel cleared the way for the stranded vehicles by removing both the affected vehicles to one side of the road in some half an hour.

Officials at Srinagar Upazila Helath Complex told New Age that 14 injured people were taken to their facility, two of whom were declared dead on arrival. They sent critically injured Runa Akhter, 24, and Jahangir Alam, 45, to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for better treatment.

They said that five of the injured were admitted to the hospital while five others left the hospital after taking primary treatment.

DMCH police outpost in-charge Bachchu Mia told New Age that Runa died at the hospital at about 4:30pm minutes after her arrival while relatives of Jahangir took him elsewhere.

Jahangir’s relative Md Hriday told New Age at 9:30pm that they took him to a private hospital at Mohammadpur hoping for a better treatment there than at a ‘government hospital’.

Munshiganj superintendent of police said that six of the deceased were killed on the spot, two at Srinagar Health Complex and another at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

The bus driver and his assistant fled the scene immediately after the accident.

Hasara highway police outpost in-charge Md Abdul Based told this daily that the fatal accident occurred as the Mawa-bound bus driver had been driving the bus recklessly and overtaking another vehicle at a high speed, ultimately coming to the wrong side of the road.

Srinagar police station officer-in-charge Hedayetul Islam Bhuiyan told this newspaper that they immediately could not ascertain the number of microbus passengers and that the bridegroom escaped the accident as he was in a car, meant for him.

He said that no case was lodged with their police station until 10:00pm and that they were trying to nab the bus driver and his assistant.