Seven killed in separate road accidents nationwide

At least seven people were killed in three separate road accidents across the country on Saturday, with a head-on collision between an oil tanker and a CNG-run auto-rickshaw in Sylhet's Osmaninagar upazila alone claiming four lives, including three members of the same family.

The Sylhet accident occurred at midday when an auto-rickshaw travelling from Sherpur in Moulvibazar towards Sylhet was struck head-on by an oncoming oil tanker at Brahmangram on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway, leaving the vehicle mangled beyond recognition. Of the seven occupants rushed to Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital, four, including the driver, were declared dead on arrival, while the remaining three sustained serious injuries and remain under treatment.

Elsewhere, two further fatalities were recorded in Natore's Boro Harishpur, where a passenger bus belonging to Shishir Paribahan, travelling from Rajshahi towards Dhaka, ploughed into the rear of a battery-run van on the Rajshahi-Dhaka highway, killing the van's driver, Saeed, and a passenger named Sabbir at the scene. In a third, unrelated incident in Kishoreganj's Pakundia, a local businessman named Nurul Islam was fatally struck by a Dhaka-bound microbus after he had approached the roadside to observe a collision between two auto-rickshaws.

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The businessman's death provoked immediate outrage among local residents, who vandalised the microbus and detained its driver before blockading the road in protest; police subsequently arrived at the scene and brought the situation under control.