Emergency numbers in Pakistan every visitor should save

The emergency numbers in Pakistan worth saving before you land are short and easy to remember: 15 for the police and 1122 for ambulance, fire and rescue. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office lists exactly those two on its Pakistan getting-help page. Add 130 for the National Highways & Motorway Police if you will be on the motorway network, 115 for the Edhi Foundation’s ambulance service, and your own embassy’s number. British nationals can reach the FCDO in London around the clock on 020 7008 5000 (+44 20 7008 5000 from a Pakistani SIM). US citizens should save the embassy’s Islamabad line, +92-51-201-4000.

That is the short version. The longer one matters because Pakistan does not run one national emergency system. Rescue 1122 is several provincial services sharing a number. Police 15 is answered by whichever force covers the ground you are standing on. On a motorway, the people with jurisdiction are federal. Knowing which organisation picks up, and what it can actually send, saves minutes when minutes count.

Emergency numbers in Pakistan: which one for which problem

Keep this table on your phone as a screenshot. It works offline, and nobody thinks clearly while a phone signal drops in and out.

One line of plain English is usually enough to start a call to 15 or 1122: what happened, where you are, how many people are hurt. Do not assume the call handler speaks fluent English. If the line is struggling, hand the phone to the nearest shopkeeper, security guard or driver who can give the location in Urdu or the local language. The location is what gets a vehicle moving.

Police 15: one number, many forces

Dial 15 anywhere in Pakistan and you reach the police, but not the same police. Policing is organised by province and territory, so a call in Lahore is taken by Punjab Police and a call in Islamabad by the Islamabad Capital Territory Police. The number stays the same. The service behind it changes from city to city.

Islamabad

The capital’s force publishes more detail than most. The Islamabad Capital Territory Police lists 15 for emergencies, 1915 as its traffic helpline, 1815 for its online women’s police station and 1715 for the Inspector General’s complaint cell. The force also publishes a Taxi Verification app and a foreigner registration service, and it describes a Safe City camera network across much of the city. For a visitor, 1915 is the useful extra: a traffic problem that is not an emergency, such as a minor collision with no injuries, belongs there rather than on 15.

Lahore, Karachi and elsewhere

Outside the capital you still dial 15. Expect the experience to vary with the force and the district. In smaller towns the nearest police station may be the practical answer, and a local contact who can walk you there is worth more than a phone number.

If you are the victim of a crime, you may be asked to lodge a First Information Report (FIR) at the police station with jurisdiction. If you expect to claim on travel insurance, check what your policy asks for and get a copy or a reference number before you leave the station. Getting that piece of paper in Multan on the day is far easier than trying to obtain it from Manchester a month later.

Rescue 1122 number: who answers in each province

The Rescue 1122 number began as a pilot in Lahore in 2004 and grew into a family of provincial services that share the same three-digit code. The brand looks national. The organisations are not. Which one answers depends on where you are, and that shapes what arrives.

Punjab’s service is the oldest and the most documented. Its official site describes an integrated model for medical emergencies, road traffic crashes, fires, building collapses, and flood and water rescues. The Sindh Emergency Rescue Service monitors calls across the province from a central command centre in Karachi, names district operations in Hyderabad, Larkana and Thatta, and runs highway rescue through an agreement with the motorway police. Rescue 1122 KP publishes its response tallies: medical emergencies dwarf everything else, with road traffic accidents a distant second.

What this means on the ground

• In a Punjab city, 1122 is the obvious first call for an injury, a fire or a road crash.
• In Karachi, 1122 now works too, but the city has long relied on charity ambulances as well. Having 115 saved as a second option costs nothing.
• In Balochistan, cover is thin away from the highways, and the FCDO advises against all travel to the whole province. More on that below.
• In the northern mountains, distance is the enemy. A service can exist and still be hours away from a valley road. Plan for that before you drive, not after.

Edhi ambulance number and the charity services

The Edhi ambulance number is 115, and it belongs to the country’s best-known charity ambulance network. The Edhi Foundation runs its ambulances on donations and volunteers, and its website lists ambulances alongside hospitals, children’s homes and a missing-persons service. The foundation has held a Guinness World Record as the world’s largest volunteer ambulance organisation since 1997.

Other charity and non-government services work with their own short codes. Wikipedia’s summary of emergency medical services in Pakistan lists the Pakistan Red Crescent Society on 1030, Al Khidmat Foundation on 1023, and the Chhipa Welfare Association on 1020 in Karachi and Islamabad. Treat those as regional back-ups, not replacements for 1122 or 115.

Ambulance or car: a practical judgement

A charity ambulance is transport with a trained crew, not necessarily an intensive care unit on wheels. For a serious injury, a neck or back problem, heavy bleeding or anyone unconscious, call an ambulance and do not move the person. For a conscious adult with a fever, a sprain or a stomach bug, a private car to a reputable hospital is often faster, and a pre-booked driver who knows the city is useful here. Your insurer’s assistance line can tell you which private hospitals it deals with directly. Ask that question on day one, not at 2am.

Motorway and highway incidents: 130 first

Pakistan’s motorways are a different jurisdiction from the cities they connect. The National Highways & Motorway Police (NH&MP) are responsible for traffic and safety law, security and recovery on the motorway network, the M-1, M-2 and M-4 among them, and the force’s remit extends to national highways. Their helpline is 130, reachable 24 hours a day from mobiles and landlines. If you have already read our note on motorway tolls and drive times on the M-1, M-2 and M-4, you will know how long some of those stretches between interchanges are. A breakdown at night between two rural interchanges is not a city-street breakdown.

A sensible order of actions on a motorway

1. Get people out of the live lanes. Passengers stand behind the barrier, not beside the car and not in front of it.
2. Call 1122 if anyone is hurt, then 130. If nobody is hurt, 130 alone is usually the right call.
3. Give a location they can use. The motorway name and direction, the last interchange or service area you passed, and any distance marker you can see. As an example, “M-2, towards Islamabad, about five kilometres past the last interchange, white saloon on the hard shoulder” is far more useful than “somewhere between Lahore and Islamabad”.
4. Photograph the scene if it is safe: vehicles, plates, damage and road position. Any claim will go more smoothly with them.
5. Tell your transport supplier what has happened, even if the driver has already called in. More on that below.

On national highways outside the motorway network, the same number applies where NH&MP patrols. On provincial roads and in towns, fall back to 15 and 1122.

British High Commission Islamabad emergency help, and other embassies

Your embassy is the right call for problems that are about you as a foreign national rather than about an injury or a crime in progress: a lost or stolen passport, an arrest, a serious hospital admission, a death in your group. It is not a substitute for 15 or 1122.

British nationals

The British High Commission in Islamabad sits in the Diplomatic Enclave, Ramna 5. Its official page does not print a direct phone number. Instead, it routes emergency calls and enquiries through the FCDO contact service, and a British Deputy High Commission provides services in Karachi. Public access is by appointment only, so do not simply turn up at the gate. For British High Commission Islamabad emergency help, the practical sequence is:

• Bookmark the FCDO contact service for Islamabad, linked from the High Commission page, which is the route it gives for emergencies as well as enquiries.
• If a friend or relative in the UK needs to raise the alarm for you, they can call the FCDO on 020 7008 5000, which the FCDO lists as a 24-hour line.
• Save both before you fly, because searching for them on hotel Wi-Fi during a crisis is miserable.

US citizens

The US State Department’s Pakistan country page lists the embassy in Islamabad on +92-51-201-4000 or +92-51-201-5000, with +92-51-201-4000 also given for after-hours emergencies. The consulate general in Karachi is +92-21-3527-5000, Lahore is +92-42-3603-4000 and Peshawar is +92-91-526-8800. The Karachi number is also given as the after-hours line for Lahore and Peshawar. The same page carries a Level 3 “Reconsider travel” advisory.

Everyone else

Canadian, Australian, EU and Gulf nationals should take their embassy’s emergency number from their own foreign ministry’s Pakistan page before departure. Numbers on third-party lists go stale; the official page is the one that gets updated.

A phone number is not a safety plan

Emergency services thin out exactly where the risk goes up, and the UK government is blunt about where that is. As of its 22 September 2026 update, the FCDO Pakistan travel advice advises against all travel to:

• the whole of Balochistan;
• anywhere within 10 miles of the Afghan border and within 10 miles of the Line of Control;
• a long list of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, including Peshawar, Swat, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Upper and Lower Dir and the Waziristan districts;
• the Karakoram Highway between Mansehra and Chilas via Battagram, Besham City, Dasu and Sazin up to the N15 junction, and the N45 from north of the Mardan ring road to the edge of Chitral City, including the Kalash valley.

It advises against all but essential travel to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the parts of Sindh north of and including Nawabshah, Dera Ghazi Khan, the Malakand, Mardan, Nowshera, Shangla and Swabi districts, and the strip within 5 miles of the India border (the Grand Trunk road to Wagah and the Kartarpur Corridor are excepted, though both are currently closed to crossings). The US State Department’s overall advisory for Pakistan is Level 3, “Reconsider travel”.

Do not read a list of emergency numbers as permission to go to those places. If you have essential reasons to travel there, that is specialist planning: check the official advice on the day, and ask your insurer in writing whether travelling against FCDO advice affects your cover.

What to tell your transport supplier after you call

If you are travelling with a booked driver or a managed transfer, your supplier is the one party that can move people and vehicles around the problem. It cannot replace the emergency services, and it should never be your first call when someone is hurt. The second call, though, can be. Once 15, 1122 or 130 has been contacted, send the supplier a short message covering five points:

1. Your booking reference and the lead passenger’s name. This is the fastest way to find your journey on the system.
2. What happened and who is involved. “Minor collision, nobody hurt” and “one passenger to hospital by 1122” need very different responses.
3. Which service you called and any reference they gave. A police incident number or the name of the receiving hospital saves a second round of questions.
4. Your exact location, ideally a shared map pin, plus where you are heading if you have been moved.
5. What you now need. A replacement vehicle, a change of pickup, a message passed to family waiting at the other end, or simply time.

A message in writing is better than a phone call here. It time-stamps the facts, it survives a dropped signal, and whoever picks it up on the operations side can act without calling you back for a spelling. Keep the supplier’s number and email in the same note as your emergency numbers. Our contact page lists how to reach iDrive, and you can save it before you fly.

Airport arrivals and long drives

The two moments when this matters most are the first hour after landing and the middle of a long road journey. On arrival, jet lag, a dead phone battery and a crowded arrivals hall combine badly, so settle how you will contact your driver before you board. The UK departure checklist from our sister service Pakistan Taxi covers that pickup side in detail. For intercity trips, agree before you set off who calls whom if the car stops, and share your live location with someone at your destination. Our pages on airport transfers in Pakistan and city-to-city journeys set out how those requests are handled; any quote or vehicle is confirmed only when the booking is accepted, not when you enquire.

The ten-minute setup before you fly

Most of the value in this article comes from doing a few dull things at home. None of them takes long.

1. Create one phone contact called “Pakistan emergency” with 15, 1122, 130 and 115 as separate numbers. Label each one. In a panic, a labelled list beats memory.
2. Add your embassy’s number from its official page, plus the FCDO’s 24-hour London number if you are British: +44 20 7008 5000.
3. Add your insurer’s emergency assistance line and your policy number. Put a photo of the policy document in the same note.
4. Add your transport supplier’s number and your booking references.
5. Screenshot the decision table above so it works without data.
6. Write your accommodation address in English and Urdu if your host can provide the Urdu version. A call handler or a passer-by can read it straight off your screen.
7. Share your itinerary with one person at home and one person in Pakistan.
8. Re-check the FCDO advice the day before you travel. It was updated on 22 September 2026, and it changes.

If your trip continues to Saudi Arabia for Umrah, the numbers change completely at the border. Our sister company Hajj Umrah Taxi keeps a separate guide to the Saudi emergency numbers and the 937 health line, so save that list too before you leave Pakistan.

When your numbers are saved and your plans are clear, you can send your journey details to iDrive for an airport pickup or a driver between cities. We will confirm what we can offer before anything is agreed.

Questions people ask

What is the main emergency number in Pakistan?

There is no single one. The FCDO lists 15 for the police and 1122 for ambulance and fire. On motorways and national highways, the NH&MP helpline is 130.

Does the Rescue 1122 number work everywhere in Pakistan?

It is used in Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, each run by its own service. In Balochistan, 1122 cover is focused on major highways.

What is the Edhi ambulance number?

115. Edhi is a charity that runs on donations and volunteers, and it lists ambulances first among its services.

How do I contact the British High Commission in Islamabad in an emergency?

Use the FCDO contact service linked from the High Commission’s GOV.UK page, which the page names as the route for emergencies. From the UK, family can call the FCDO on 020 7008 5000 at any hour.

Should I call my driver or the emergency services first?

The emergency services, every time someone is hurt or in danger. Tell your transport supplier second, with your booking reference, location and what you need next.