Nine persons were killed and one other injured on January 29 as a car fell into the river in the Darvoz district of the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO).

The accident took place in the evening on the Dushanbe-Khorog highway between the villages of Jarf and Vishkharv, according to the Committee on Emergency Situations and Civil Defense (CoES) under the Government of Tajikistan.

The driver, the resident of the Kurgovad village (Darvoz district), apparently lost control of his Opel-Zafira and it fell into the Panj River, Umeda Yusufi, a spokeswoman for the CoES, told Asia-Plus today morning.  

According to her, the driver survived the car accident while his passenger – a man, three woman and five children (all of them are residents of Darvoz) – died in the accident.  

The Opel Zafira, also known as the Zafira Tourer since 2011, is a multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) produced by the German manufacturer Opel since the beginning of 1999.  The first and second generation are classified compact MPVs, whereas the third generation, launched in the end of 2011, is classified as a large MPV.

The Opel Zafira has seven seats arranged in three rows, the back row of which can be folded into the floor to create more space, individually or together, rather than requiring that the extra seats be physically removed from the vehicle.  The system was named Flex 7.