DHAKA: At least 15 construction workers were killed and several others injured when a truck collided with a pick-up van in Bangladesh on Wednesday, officials said.
The accident occurred at around 5.30 am when the sand-laden truck hit the pick-up van carrying around 25-30 construction workers in the Kutubpur area in Sylhet's Dakshin Surma Upazila, reported The Dhaka Tribune newspaper.
According to Fakhrul Islam of Osmaninagar Fire Service and Civil Defence, who led the rescue efforts, the accident occurred because the truck driver fell asleep.
Islam said at least 15 people were killed in the accident, 11 of them on the spot.
"I have never seen such an accident before. It looks like the truck driver was asleep when the accident took place. It seems that the sand-laden truck was moving very fast," the fire service official was quoted as saying.
"I went to the spot after receiving the news. 11 dead bodies were recovered by 7 am," Deputy Director of Sylhet Fire Service and Civil Defence Moniruzzaman was quoted as saying.
Sylhet Metropolitan Police Additional Commissioner Masud Rana said, "The bodies are being handed over to the families of the victims without postmortems. All the victims were construction workers. They were going to do welding work in Osmaninagar early in the morning with machinery on a pickup van."