"People had come here for a picnic and 18 were swept away by large waves when they swam too far from shore," local police official Abdul Jabbar said. The bodies of 18 people were pulled from the ocean while five people were rescued and taken to hospitals in Karachi, Jabbar said.
"At least two of the drowned people were young boys," Jabbar said. He said police, in the absence of lifeguards, had warned people about swimming out of their depths on Gadani. "Most people coming here are not trained swimmers, but we could not keep them from going too far into the sea because they didn't take us seriously," Jabbar said.