At least 22 people, including women and children, have been killed when a passenger bus plunged 500 metres into a ravine in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, police say.

Police officer Rashid Naeem Khan said the bus had been heading for the garrison city of Rawalpindi when it went out of control as it passed along the road carved out of the mountainside above the river Neelum.

“The bus apparently developed some technical fault,” he said, adding eight others passengers were critically injured.

Pallandri, some 160 km east of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir,