THE THREE-day long, 759 annual Urs celebration of Hazrat Usman Marvendi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan town of Jamshoro took an ugly turn in Sindh province when eighteen people were reported to have died in various suffocation related incidents. A lot of the devotees were also reported to have lost their lives in the canal.  The news was reported by a leading Pakistan based newspaper on Friday.

During the 759 annual Urs celebrations, tens of thousands of people had converged from different areas of the country to pay obeisance to of Hazrat Usman Marvendi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Out of the eighteen who died, six of them had drowned in the canal. The deceased have been identified as Shahzad, 20 and Babar Raza, 19, residents of Lyari Karachi. Four more, who have drowned have not yet been identified. However, the corpses of the deceased have been handed over to the respective families and the other four have been kept in the mortuaries as their identities were not confirmed.