LAHORE - At least six people including the Punjab Governor's sister and her husband were killed while several others sustained injuries, some of them critical, in a road mishap when several vehicles collided with one an other on Motorway near Sheikhupura interchange on Tuesday. Motorway patrolling and Edhi officials who launched rescue operation said that the collision took place due to a thick smoke coming out from the nearby fields where the farmers had set the wheat crop's waste on fire. As per details of the accident, a truck collided with a car after it suddenly applied brakes due to poor visibility ahead. "Poor visibility on the Motorway due to thick smoke caused dreadful accident," said Javed Chaudhry, the spokesman of the Inspector General Motorway Police. He said that as many as 16 vehicles including 12 cars were damaged almost completely after the collision. The accident took place at around 12:40pm. Six people were killed and around 16 passengers were injured in the mishap. Six of them were rushed to the Civil Hospital, Sheikhupura, in critical condition, the motorway police spokesman said, adding that some of the critically wounded were later shifted to the government hospitals here in the City. It is the first major accident since the start of the Motorway project. More than a dozen vehicles were damaged. Javed Chaudhry said that a car rider first applied emergency breaks when he witnessed a blind view on the road due to smoke. Soon after, a truck coming from behind hit the car, which was followed by a big tanker. Similarly two other cars, then a bus and again many other cars dashed into the vehicles on the road which caused the horrible mishap, he said. Punjab Governor's brother-in-law was among three other passengers who died on the spot while his (Governor) sister succumbed to her injuries in the hospital. The injured were immediately shifted to different government hospitals of the provincial capital including the Jinnah, Shaikh Zayed and Lahore General Hospital. Eyewitnesses said that the smoke emitting from the blazing bushes in the fields by the roadside, blurring visibility, caused this accident which also halted traffic on the Motorway for hours on end. The long queues of vehicles could be seen spreading over a long stretch of the road. The Chief Minister Punjab and IGP also rushed to the spot besides other senior government officials when they learnt that Punjab Governor's sister and her husband were also among those who lost their lives in the accident. The Edhi officials said that more than 15 vehicles including a bus, truck, tanker and around a dozen cars were damaged in the mishap. People who died in the accident have been identified as Nasim Ijaz, the sister of Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool, her husband Sheikh Ijaz, Rukhsana, 37, Rafaqat, 30, Shabana, 25 besides a 22-year-old unknown girl, the Edhi officials said. Punjab governor's sister and her husband were riding a car (LRQ 8355), the Edhi officials said. Motorway Police said the mishap occurred near Sheikhupura interchange on the Lahore-Islamabad Highway, when two cars clashed and later one bus truck and several vehicles coming from behind kept crashing in a row, which resulted in the death of six persons and injuries to more than two dozen others. It is stated that the motorway police paid no heed to display precautionary signboards alongside the Motorway to warn the motorists about the smoke phenomenon which caused blind view to the passengers. The spokesman of the IG Motorway, however, denied the reports of Motorway police officials' negligence, saying that a team of patrolling officers was present at the venue and they kept informing the motorists to slow down their vehicles' speed. To a query, he said that officials of an Army's agency, Frontier Works Organization (FWO), were busy in extinguishing the fires that had engulfed more than a kilometre area of the nearby fields. SSP Motorway Arif Mushtaq was not available for comments despite several attempts on his cell phone.