Thirteen workers dead in road accident in Saudi Arabia

By Anastasia Tomazhenkova: Police reported at least 13 oil company employees died in a terrible road accident early Friday in Saudi Arabia.

Photo: Thirteen workers dead in road accident in Saudi Arabia

Police officials reported that eight victims were from Bangladesh, two were Indian and three were Pakistani. Eighteen people were also injured and nine of them were reported in critical condition.

The workers were riding on the back of a pickup truck when it collided head-on with another vehicle coming in the opposite direction near Baqeeq, 380 kilometers (240 miles) east of the capital, Riyadh.

The workers were all employees of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company.

Rescue workers were trying to extract the bodies from the wreckage of the vehicles.

Earlier Friday, three local television stations in Bangladesh reported on the accident in Saudi Arabia but their reports differed from the Saudi police.

The private station Bangla Vision said 11 Bangladeshis were killed when a bus carrying the workers collided with another vehicle near the eastern Saudi city of Dammam. It reported the names of the dead and said at least 13 Bangladeshi workers injured in the accident were hospitalized.

Ntv station cited Harun-or-Rashid, official with the Bangladesh mission in Riyadh, as saying they were checking papers of the dead workers for details to send their bodies home. Channel I reported that several others, including some Pakistani and Indian nationals, were among the casualties.

The conflicting data in the reports could not immediately be reconciled.