OUR CORRESPONDENT, Faridpur

Four people were killed and three others injured in a head-on collision between an ambulance and a truck in Gopalganj Sadar upazila yesterday.

The deceased are Shamsul Alam, 60, a retired doctor of Khulna Shipyard; his attendant Jewel Hossain, 36; ambulance driver Momin Khan, 42; and his assistant Faisal, 25.

Shamsul was on his way to a hospital in Dhaka for treatment, said police.

Talking to this newspaper, Shamsul’s son, Riyadul, said his father had been suffering from psychological disorders for the past few years and was under the care of doctors at a private clinic in Dhaka’s Keraniganj.

“As my father’s mental state started deteriorating the clinic authorities sent a five-member team to take my father to the clinic,” said Riyadul.

“They picked up my father from our home in Khulna in the morning and started heading towards Dhaka in the ambulance. Later, we came to know that the ambulance got into an accident,” he added.

The ambulance collided head-on with a truck in the Miapara area on the Dhaka-Khulna Highway at around 6:45am, said Javed Masud, officer-in-charge (OC) of Gopalganj Sadar Police Station.

The ambulance driver died on the spot, and six others were injured.

The police, with the help of firefighters, rescued the injured and sent them to Gopalganj Sadar Hospital, where on-duty doctors declared three people dead, the OC added.

The truck driver, Mohammad Ali, was also injured and is receiving treatment at Gopalganj Sadar Hospital.

Speaking to this newspaper, he said: “I, along with two others, was transporting an excavator to Khulna from Dhaka. When we reached the Purba Miapara area, the ambulance suddenly got onto the wrong lane, and we crashed into each other.”