Reporting snapshot · 13 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The account rests on police and rescue accounts given overnight and on the Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister's statement. The number of people who may still be unaccounted for had not been settled when this was written, and no cause has been established for the crash.
Eleven people were killed and two others injured when a passenger van plunged into the Yasin River near Morkah Bridge in the Ghizer district of Gilgit-Baltistan on the evening of Thursday, 12 November, the police said. Pakistan Today reported that the van was travelling from Gilgit to Yasin Valley when its driver lost control and the vehicle went into the river, and Geo News, citing rescue officials gave the same toll from the same accident.
The two accounts differ on the name of the bridge — Geo News placed the accident near Noh Bridge, while the police account carried by Pakistan Today said the driver lost control near Morkah Bridge — and on how many people were injured at different stages of the night. They do not differ on the outcome: 11 people dead, including an infant, and two injured. Police said the deceased and the injured were residents of Yasin Valley, and that an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the accident, Pakistan Today reported.
Geo News described the van as a passenger vehicle on the road from Gilgit to Hundur, a village in the upper part of the Yasin Valley, and said the search for anyone else who might have been aboard was still running when it filed its report.
A toll that moved through the night
The death toll was not settled for several hours. Rescuers who reached the scene first reported five deaths and a number of injured, and the count rose steadily as more bodies were brought out of the water, Geo News reported. In an early update, police said rescue teams had retrieved the bodies of 10 passengers, including two women, and had rescued three injured people, among them a child, Pakistan Today reported. In a subsequent statement the same police account revised the toll to 11, including an infant, while confirming that two people had been injured.
The interim figures published overnight therefore ranged from five, according to Geo News, to ten, according to the police account carried by Pakistan Today. The pattern is consistent with one of the three people rescued alive later dying, though neither account sets out the sequence of events behind it.
The injured were taken out of the water and moved to hospital. Pakistan Today said they were shifted to Gupis Civil Hospital for treatment, while Geo News said they were taken to a hospital in Gahkuch, the capital of Ghizer district.
What the chief minister ordered
Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Amjad Hussain described the loss of life as “deeply distressing” and directed the district administration, rescue agencies and health department officials to ensure the injured were transported to nearby hospitals immediately and to mobilise all available resources for their treatment, Pakistan Today reported. He also instructed the administration to make sure that no negligence occurred during the rescue operation and that the treatment and care of the injured were closely monitored.
The instruction follows a pattern set after other transport deaths this autumn. After a bus and a truck collided near Pakpattan on 5 November, killing 11 people, the Punjab chief minister sought a report and directed the district administration to secure the best possible medical treatment for the injured, KhabarWire reported on that collision. Ten passengers died when a bus overturned on the Indus Highway near Rajanpur on 21 October, KhabarWire reported at the time.
A road network with a long record of such crashes
The Ghizer accident came five days after a passenger bus travelling from Hunza to Rawalpindi collided with a trailer near the Havelian Interchange on the Hazara Motorway, killing eight people and injuring 30, the National Highways and Motorway Police said an investigation had been launched, Geo News reported. The same account noted that in 2018 seven men were killed when a passenger van plunged into a ravine near the Hoper valley, and that in May 2024 at least 20 people were killed and 21 injured when a bus running from Rawalpindi to Gilgit-Baltistan plunged into a ravine in Diamer district, where police said the vehicle veered off a narrow mountain road.
Geo News also reported that the motorway police have introduced checks on public transport vehicles for overloading, valid fitness certificates, route permits and driving licences, and that a campaign launched in March 2026 moved passengers off bus rooftops and kept vehicles with faulty tyres off the roads.
What is not settled is why the van left the road in the first place. Police said an investigation was under way to determine the cause, and no account of that cause has been published. No authority has yet said whether the condition of the vehicle, the state of the road or anything about the driver was responsible. For the families involved, the confirmed figures are 11 dead, including an infant, and two injured.
