At least 30 people were killed when two buses collided in a head-on crash in Pakistan.

Police said speeding on a dangerous curve seemed to be the cause of the accident in the Rahim Yar Khan district on Monday.

Women and children are among the dead and another 69 are thought to be injured.

Deadly road accidents are common in Pakistan, mainly because of bad road infrastructure and reckless driving habits.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed "deep grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives".</s>MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Officials in central Pakistan say two passenger buses have collided head-on, killing 24 people and injuring 69.

Police official Jamshid Shah says speeding seems to be the cause of Monday’s accident, which occurred on a dangerous curve in Rahim Yar Khan district.

Shah says women and children are among those who were killed and injured.

He says police and rescue officials are using cutters to retrieve bodies stuck inside the two buses.

Dr. Tasleem Kamran says several of the injured are in critical condition.

Deadly road accidents are common in Pakistan, mainly because of bad road infrastructure and reckless driving habits.</s>Images from the crash site showed a bus on its side with its windows shattered, and another bus with its roof partly caved in.

Officials said the buses collided at about 6 a.m. (0100 GMT) near Rahim Yar Khan, a Punjab city about 600km (373 miles) south of provincial capital Lahore.

"Death toll has climbed to 30," Hassan Iqbal, police inspector of Rahim Yar Khan, told Reuters.

Rescuers earlier said more than 30 people were injured in the crash.

Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan, where traffic rules are rarely enforced and roads in many rural areas are poor.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office said he has "expressed deep grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives".</s>MULTAN, Pakistan -- Two passenger buses collided head-on in central Pakistan on Monday, killing 25 people and injuring 69, officials said.

The accident, which occurred on a dangerous curve in Khanpur town in Rahim Yar Khan district, was likely caused by speeding, said police official Jamshid Shah.

Several children, college students and women were among the victims, Shah said. He said police and rescue officials were using cutters to retrieve bodies trapped inside the two buses.

Dr. Tasleem Kamran at a government hospital said the injured were being treated. Nearly 40 were reported to be in critical condition, she said. "We have declared an emergency. We desperately need blood," she said.

Local TV footage showed ambulances and rescue officials rushing the injured persons to hospitals.

Before the rescuers and police arrived, resident Waqar Ahmad said townspeople, who heard the sound of the crash, arrived at the scene and started pulling the victims out of the wreckage. "We thought some bomb had exploded," Ahmad said.

Jamila Bibi, 60, was travelling in one of the buses, taking her 9-year-old son Faisal Ali at his school.

The driver was reckless, Bibi said. "We protested and asked him to slow down," she told The Associated Press by phone from her hospital bed.

At one point, all the passengers stood up and asked the driver to slow down or halt, but he didn't listen to anyone. Instead, she said, the driver told the passengers that anyone who was afraid could get off the vehicle.

Bibi suffered minor injuries but said that her son was badly injured and was fighting for his life.

Deadly road accidents are common in Pakistan, mainly because of bad road infrastructure and reckless driving.
Two buses collide near the city of Rahim Yar Khan, Pakistan, killing at least 30 people and injuring 69 others.