Imphal, June 22, 2010: A truck mishap on NH 53 Tuesday claimed two lives including the driver of the vehicle, injuring as many as 24 occupants of the truck.

All of them are workers engaged in the repairing works on the highway, officials said.

The ill-fated vehicle was among the two trucks heading towards Jiribam with 45 workers engaged in repairing works of the NH-53 by the state PWD department.

Most of the workers hail from Thoubal district of Manipur, reports said.

The truck met with the accident at Kotlein under Nungba police station of Tamenglong district on the stretch of the NH-53 at about 11.50 am when the vehicle got skidded off the road and rolled down into the deep gorge in the hill terrain portion of the highway.

The driver of the truck died at the spot while one of the occupants died on the way to hospital in Imphal.

Twenty-one injured occupants were brought to Regional Institute of Medical Sciences ( RIMS ) Hospital Imphal.

The death toll is likely to increase as ten of them are stated to be in serious conditions.

Injured occupants were brought up to Imphal by the personnel of the CRPF and Assam Rifles who immediately launched the rescue operation when the truck met with the accident, police said.

The ill-fated truck was among two trucks occupied by labourers from Imphal engaged by the state PWD in the road improvement works of the NH-53, the report said.

The incident was the second most dreaded highway mishap occurred on the NH-53 in the last one month.

In the middle week of May last, 11 personnel of the Territorial Army including a CRPF in civies were killed when the vehicle they were travelling fell into a deep gorge.

Meanwhile, a passenger bus coming towards Imphal side with passenger on the Indo-Myanmar section of the NH-39 rammed four school vans parked on the roadside in front of a private school.

The incident occurred at about 10.40 am at Kakwa under Singjamei police station of Imphal west today.

The bus hit the vans waiting for picking up students after the class of the day.

No one including the drivers were not in the vans when they were hit by the speeding bus.

One of the vans was totally overrun and found beneath the bus.

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