Chandigarh, December 29
A thick blanket of fog for the second consecutive day today threw normal life out of gear causing disruptions in rail, road and air traffic in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh even as cold wave sweeping the region continued unabated. Indian Airlines and Jet Airways flights from Delhi to this city had to be cancelled due to dense fog, official sources said. The Jet Airways flight to Delhi from here was also cancelled on account of bad weather, they said.

All trains on the Delhi-Ludhiana-Amritsar, Delhi-Jalandhar-Jammu and Delhi-Ambala-Kalka sections were reported running late by at least two hours, according to railway sources.

Fog caused even the express trains to run at snail’s pace resulting in inconvenience to thousands of commuters. The trains, all coming from Delhi side which got delayed included the Chandigarh Shatabdi, late by three hours, Shane-e-Punjab, late by five hours, Swarn Shatabdi, late by four hours and the Himalayan Queen, delayed by over three hours, the sources said.

Bus services in Punjab and Haryana were also hit by dense fog, which considerably reduced the visibility.

Ten persons were killed in accidents caused in the region due to fog.

GURDASPUR: Dense fog paralysed normal life and claimed six lives in the district during the past 24 hours.

Pinky (11) died on Friday night when she was hit by a scooter on the road in Purana Shalla locality. Ram Lal of Danial died on the spot on Saturday when the scooter which he was driving rammed into a tree in the Narot Jaimal Singh area.

In another accident that took place near Wadala Granthian, Manjit Singh and his relation Hardeep Kaur died on the spot when the scooter which they were riding rammed into a tractor-trailor. Harpal Singh, driver of the tractor-trailor, has been arrested.

An unidentified beggar was run over by train near Dhariwal. In a head-on collision between a truck and a bus on the GT Road near Sujanpur, Tarsem Lal (35), truck driver and resident of Bari Brahmana in Jammu and Kashmir, succumbed to his injuries at Civil Hospital here on Saturday. Bus driver Balbir Singh was seriously injured.

KATHUA: Three persons were killed, 63 injured seriously in two mishaps that occurred on the Kathua-Jammu national highway due to dense fog on Saturday.

An ill-fated SRTC bus going to Amritsar from Jammu rolled down the Rajbagh Ujh bridge at 6.30 am due to dense fog on the national highway. Two persons were killed on the spot and 38 injured.

They were admitted to the district hospital. Four in critical condition have been shifted to GMC, Jammu. The two killed have been identified as Ram Paul, conductor of the bus and Kirpal Singh of Mendhar village.

In another incident, a person was killed and 25 injured when a matador collided with a video coach bus and another mini bus at Dyalachak. The deceased has been identified as Biju Ram of Sherpur village.