Seven Egyptians killed in road accident

AMMAN — Seven Egyptian workers were killed on Sunday morning in a road accident while heading to work in Rweished, officials said.

The seven were part of a group of nine Egyptiansand a Jordanian driver who were in a minibus heading to a worksite in Rweished in Mafraq, some 80km northeast of Amman, at around 6:30am when their vehicle collided with a trailer truck that was hauling rocks, a senior traffic official said.

“The strong impact caused the immediate death of seven passengers, while three others including the driver were listed in fair and critical conditions,” the traffic official told The Jordan Times.

The official said the cause of the accident was “the sudden change of lane which caused the minibus to slam head on with an oncoming trailer truck”.

Egyptian Ambassador to Jordan Khaled Tharwat, who travelled to Mafraq to follow up on the accident, expressed his deepest sympathies for the victims.

“This is a realy unfortunate incident that involved some of our nationals who are working in Jordan,” the ambassador told The Jordan Times.

Tharwat said he also visited the injured and supervised the transport of the seven victims to Al Bashir Hospital in Amman as well as one of the injured who was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Amman for further medical attention.

“We have informed the Egyptian foreign ministry to notify their families in Egypt and we are working with the Jordanian authorities to transport the bodies to Egypt,” the ambassador said.

He expressed his gratitude to the interior and health ministers, the Mafraq governor and the director of Mafraq Public Hospital for “their full cooperation and speedy procedures”.

This is the second road accident in March to claim high fatalities among non-Jordanians.  On March 16, 16 Palestinian pilgrims died and 34 others were injured when their bus overturned near the Mudawara border crossing while on their way to Saudi Arabia to perform umra (the lesser Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca).

Like the Rweished accident on Sunday, the Mudawara accident was also attributed to changing the lane abruptly that made the driver lose control of the vehicle.

By the end of July 2015, 72,290 traffic accidents were recorded in the Kingdom, resulting in 338 deaths and 6,102 injuries, according to Public Security Department figures.