At least 20 people were killed and six injured when a passenger bus collided with an oil tanker on the Multan-Sukkur Motorway (M-5) in the early hours of Tuesday, officials said.

Multan Deputy Commissioner Tahir Wattoo confirmed the incident in a statement, saying that the passenger bus, which was travelling from Lahore to Karachi, hit the oil tanker from the rear side at Jalalpur Peerwala interchange on the motorway.

A fire erupted after the collision and 20 people died on the spot, the statement added.

Later, Multan Commissioner Amir Khattak also confirmed the development in a tweet. He said the accident had taken place around 4am.

Photographs shared by him showed that the bus and the oil tanker were completely burnt in the incident.

At 4am at motorway obarra junobi terrible accident happened between bus LES -1211- 09 and Oil TankerLDA/6. Bus that was moving from Lahore to Karachi hit oil Tanker from backside and fire erupted.06X persons got Injured and 20X died on the spot.On spot monitoring rescue process pic.twitter.com/r87E2OvvmF

— Commissioner Multan (@CommissionerMu2) August 16, 2022