Reporting snapshot · 29 October 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The explosion happened at about 10:40pm on Wednesday night, 28 October, and the death toll rose through the night and early Thursday as injured people died on the way to hospital. No official body has confirmed the cause of the blast, and no inquiry has been announced.
What happened
An oxygen cylinder exploded inside an ambulance standing outside a rural health centre in Dano Dandhal village, Nagarparkar tehsil, Tharparkar district, Sindh, late on Wednesday night, destroying the vehicle and killing ten people, Geo News reported on Thursday.
The ambulance was operated by the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative (PPHI), and it caught fire while staff were changing its oxygen cylinder, rescue officials told Geo News. The health centre’s administration said a pregnant woman was still inside the ambulance when staff began fitting the cylinder, and that the explosion during that process set the vehicle alight.
The Express Tribune reported that Rescue 1122 officials said the blast happened at around 10:40pm on Wednesday, while a patient was being transferred into the ambulance, and that seven people were killed and five injured when the PPHI ambulance caught fire at the rural health centre following a suspected cylinder explosion. Health centre staff were among those injured, and the ambulance was gutted in the fire, the paper said.
The toll moved through the night as people taken to hospital died. Geo News reported on Thursday morning that the count had risen to ten after one of the injured died while being taken to Karachi. Police said the dead included a PPHI dispenser, the ambulance driver, a watchman and another employee, as well as the pregnant woman and two attendants, Geo News reported, and that two midwives and a female attendant at the health centre were among the injured.
The injured were first shifted to hospitals in Mithi and Nagarparkar for treatment, The Express Tribune said, and Geo News reported that they were later moved to Karachi after initial treatment. District administration officials, Rescue 1122 personnel and the health department attended the scene, and authorities were working to establish the identities of the dead. The Nagarparkar assistant commissioner said the ambulance was parked at the health facility when the explosion occurred, according to Geo News.
The official response
President Asif Ali Zardari expressed grief over the loss of lives in the oxygen cylinder explosion in an ambulance in Tharparkar and prayed for the speedy recovery of the injured, Radio Pakistan reported on Thursday. In a statement, the President called for a transparent investigation to determine the causes of the incident immediately, and stressed the need to strengthen safety measures to prevent similar tragedies.
Sindh Home Minister and Law Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar took notice of the blast and sought details from the Tharparkar senior superintendent of police and the deputy commissioner, a provincial government spokesperson told Geo News. He directed authorities to ensure immediate medical assistance and timely treatment for the injured, the spokesperson said, and expressed condolences to the families of those who died.
Initial reports indicate that an oxygen cylinder exploded inside the ambulance, and expert teams from Mirpurkhas and Karachi have been called in to examine the evidence, the provincial government spokesperson said, according to Geo News.
Why it matters
The blast killed the crew of a public primary healthcare ambulance and a patient inside it, during a routine task: swapping an oxygen cylinder. Nothing in the accounts so far points to a collision, an attack or a fire at the health centre itself. The deaths happened inside the vehicle, while staff were working on its oxygen supply.
Emergency transport in Tharparkar is thin to begin with. In the same report, Geo News noted that in October 2019 Civil Hospital Mithi had refused to provide an ambulance to transport the body of a deceased infant, citing a lack of funds for fuel. That was a separate episode, but it showed how little spare capacity the district’s ambulance services have. In a largely arid district where the nearest hospital can be a long drive away, one destroyed ambulance is a service problem before it is a tragedy.
The response also falls into a pattern Pakistan has seen before. After the PIMS nursery fire in August, when 14 babies died, the federal health ministry ordered fire-safety audits of public hospitals nationwide and the federal health secretary was suspended. Sindh’s rural facilities have their own recent toll: four newborns died of mpox in two Khairpur hospitals in April and two neonatal units were closed.
Beyond the cause, the practical questions are whether the health centre still has a working ambulance, and whether the oxygen equipment carried on the vehicles that serve these districts is inspected, certified and maintained on a schedule.
What is still uncertain
No official body has confirmed what caused the blast. Geo News reported that the cause of the explosion has yet to be officially confirmed, and the provincial account so far stops at initial reports of a cylinder explosion, with expert teams called in from Mirpurkhas and Karachi to examine the evidence. No findings have been published.
No inquiry has been announced. The president’s statement asks for a transparent investigation, but no committee, terms of reference or timeline had been announced by Thursday morning, and no statement from PPHI on how the ambulance’s oxygen cylinder was maintained, when it was last inspected or who was responsible for the equipment carried on board had been reported.
The number of dead may still change. Ten had been confirmed by Thursday morning, the identities of several were still being established, and one injured person had already died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. Whether everyone treated at Mithi, Nagarparkar and Karachi is included in the count was not yet clear.
Whether the cylinder failed, whether it was handled wrongly, or whether both played a part is what the expert examination has to settle, and what the president’s call for a transparent investigation is aimed at.
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