Two women were killed and 15 other passengers suffered injuries after an Amritsar-bound tourist bus crashed into a trailer truck parked on the highway near Chehlan in Samrala on Wednesday morning.
Police initiated a rescue operation after receiving information about the mishap and rushed the victims to hospital.
However, two passengers, Meenakshi, 51, and Saroj Bala, 54, both residents of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, succumbed to their injuries.
Rishabh, one of the injured victims, said the passengers were all tourists from Madhya Pradesh, on a multi-city tour. After visiting Kedarnath in Uttarakhand, they had hired a bus for Amritsar. While heading towards Amritsar via Ludhiana, the bus rammed into a trailer truck parked on the highway around 5.30 am.
Most of the passengers were asleep at the time of the collision, not allowing them to brace themselves for impact, leading to injuries, he added.