Five killed in freak camel accident on Saudi Arabia highway
Manama: Five members of a family, a mother, a baby and her three other children, were killed in a freak road accident when their car hit a stray camel on a highway in western Saudi Arabia.
Five other members of the family survived the accident, but were injured and taken to hospital for treatment.
“The operations room of the Red Crescent received a call at 12:40am on Wednesday about an accident in which a vehicle collided with a stray camel, 15 kilometres away from the area of Ranya,” Shadi Al Thubaiti, the spokesperson for the Red Crescent in Taif, said.
“Four rescue teams from the Red Crescent and two from the health ministry rushed to the area and discovered that 10 people were involved in the accident. Three children, a mother and her baby were dead, another mother and her baby were slightly injured and two men had a cardiac problem. The tenth is a child,” he said, quoted by Saudi news site Sabq.
Al Thubaiti said that following the injured were taken to a public hospital for further treatment.
Last year, Saudi legal experts called for enacting a law that would penalise the owners of camels that caused road accidents amid concerns about their growing threats.
In July, a young man was killed and another seriously injured when their vehicle hit a stray camel late.
The accident occurred on an unlit road in the Tabuk Region in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
“The two cases were referred to King Fahd Hospital in Tabuk,” Khalid Al Enezi, the spokesperson for the Red Crescent in the region, said. “One young man has died and the other is still in hospital,” he said.
The area has recently seen a resurgence of accidents related to stray camels considered a grave menace, particularly at night.
Earlier, a girl in her 20s was killed and several other passengers were injured when their car was hit by a stray camel on the same road.
Residents called for erecting fences to keep the animals away from the road, particularly at night.
A large number of students and teachers as well as employees use the busy road to go to school and work, they said.
The residents said that camel owners should be more careful with their camels and should ensure they do not constitute a menace to road users.
“The least they can do is to attach luminous straps on their backs so that they can be seen from far and avoided in case they come to the road,” one resident said. “This is highly necessary because camels prefer to move at night and their owners should appreciate the extent of their danger on unlit roads.”
In 2013, four people were killed and three seriously injured when their vehicle hit a stray camel.
The victims were members of the same family and were driving on an unlit road near the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Related Posts