Shimla, Aug 8 (IANS) At least seven people were killed and 11 were injured on Saturday when a private public transport bus rolled into a 100-feet deep gorge on the Tissa-Bairagarh route in Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh, police said. Most of the victims were locals and going to Chamba town. The dead included the driver and the conductor. The injured have been admitted to a hospital in Tissa town.According to preliminary information, there were approximately 20 to 25 passengers on board the bus at the time of the mishap.Chamba Superintendent of Police, Vijay Saklani, said the cause of the accident is yet be ascertained and the police would investigate the circumstances.Chaos ensued at the site after the accident. People in the area began rescue operations even before local authorities reached the spot. However, rescue operations gained momentum with the arrival of police and administrative teams.

According to information, the bus owned by Sharma Travelers departed from Bairagarh for Chamba at around 6.30 a.m. The bus had only travelled three kms when near the Chaluj turn the driver lost control and the bus skidded off the road and fell into the gorge.The bus landed on the road beneath the accident spot. Eyewitnesses told the police that as the driver was negotiating a turn, the driver lost control of the vehicle and the bus rolled down the hill.Eyewitnesses said the administration had a tough time extricating the victims from the badly-mangled bus.Chamba is one of the remotest places in the state and scarcity and low frequency of passenger buses in the district often leads to overcrowding of the vehicles.Often the police blamed buses belonging to private operators and their “reckless, untrained drivers” for most of the fatal accidents in the state.The spot where the mishap took place has earned the notoriety of being accident-prone as it has seen several road accidents in the recent past.

/IANS