Five people, including three members of a family, were killed and three others injured as a bus rammed into a parked ambulance on the Dhaka-Mawa Expressway in the Nimtoli area under Sirajdikhan upazila in Munshiganj on Thursday.
The deceased are Abdus Samad Fakir, 60, his son Hafez Billal Fakir, 40, and daughter Afsana, 22, of Mithapukur village under Sadar upazila in Madaripur, the ambulance driver Mahbub Sardar, 28, and another unidentified woman.
The police said that they arrested the bus driver鈥檚 assistant and the bus supervisor. The bus driver, however, fled the scene.
Billal鈥檚 maternal brother-in-law Miraz Hossain said that 10 members of their family were travelling to Dhaka by ambulance as Billal鈥檚 pregnant wife Rozina Begum required medical attention.
As the ambulance鈥檚 tyre burst, its driver parked it on the expressway for repair works, he said and added that some of the passengers stayed in the ambulance and the others got down from it during repair works.
At about 12:3pm, a speeding Golden Line Paribahan bus crashed into the parked ambulance, killing one on the spot and injuring seven others, he continued.
The injured people were rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared four others dead, DMCH police outpost in-charge inspector Mohammad Faruque said.
He said that the injured people were now undergoing treatment at the hospital and the bodies were kept at the hospital morgue for post-mortem examination.
Hashara highway police station officer-in-charge Abdul Kader Zilani said that they arrested the bus supervisor Kalyan Biswas and the bus driver鈥檚 assistant Saiful Islam at the DMCH area Thursday afternoon.
They also seized the bus but the driver went in hiding, he said.
Fatal road accidents on the Dhaka-Mawa expressway have become a regular incident since it was opened to traffic in March 2020.
