4 soldiers killed as truck overturns near Samba

Four soldiers were killed and 10 injured when an army truck overturned near Samba on the Pathankot-Jammu national highway on Wednesday night.

Four soldiers were killed and 10 injured when an army truck overturned near Samba on the Pathankot-Jammu national highway on Wednesday night.

The truck was ferrying 14 soldiers from Amritsar to participate in a gun drill competition in Akhnoor, 27 km from Jammu, when the accident occurred at Jatwal, 48 km from Jammu. Defence spokesperson Lt Col Manish Mehta said the soldiers belonged to an air defence regiment in Amritsar.

Local residents, police and army personnel from Samba rescued the soldiers. The injured were taken to the nearby Military Hospital, Maheshwar in Samba, before being referred to the Military Hospital in Jammu.

Ghagwal station house officer (SHO) Suraj Pathania said, “It appears that the driver lost control and the truck skidded off the road to fall in a 25-foot ditch. The driver is among the four killed.”

The dead were identified as lance naik Sanjay Kumar Rai of Gorakhpur in UP, lance naik Murli Manohar Babu of Andhra Pradesh, naik Abhishek Kumar of Bihar and Sanjay Ghosh of West Bengal.

A case was registered.

Traffic on the usually busy Pathankot-Jammu national highway was halted for an hour after the accident.