Pakistan police: Truck accidentally kills 7 Afghan refugees

QUETTA, Pakistan – A Pakistani police official says a truck loaded with sand toppled over, collapsing a mud shack and killing seven members of an Afghan refugee family living there.

Police official Aslam Bokhari says the incident happened on Tuesday in the southwestern city of Quetta. He says the truck was about to unload its cargo of sand when the accident took place.

Bokhari says the shack belonged to an Afghan refugee, Sher Mohammad. He was not killed but his four children were, along with two women and a man. Quetta has several illegal Afghan refugee settlements built on its outskirts, mainly made up of makeshift mud houses.

Pakistan has for years been home to 1.5 million registered and almost 1 million unregistered Afghan refugees, who fled to safety from their war-torn homeland.