Eight dead, 19 injured in three-vehicle desert highway crash

AMMAN — Eight people, including one Egyptian, were killed and 19 were injured in a three-vehicle accident on the desert highway near Qatraneh on Thursday, official sources said.

The accident, which occurred at around 3pm, involved a trailer truck, a small bus and a car on the Qatraneh highway, 140km south of Amman, a senior traffic official said.

“In such unfortunate incidents, when there are high fatalities, we form a committee to investigate the accident, and we cannot reveal the cause of the accident until the committee issues its final report,” the official told The Jordan Times.

Later on Thursday, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted the Public Security Department as saying that the trailer truck driver’s sudden change of lanes was the cause of the accident.

The case will be referred to the prosecutor, Petra added.

The majority of the dead and injured were Jordanians, a senior Civil Defence Department (CDD) official said.

“We have identified the majority of the victims and can confirm that one of the deceased was an Egyptian,” the CDD official told The Jordan Times.

Many of the victims were in the bus, the CDD official said, and “they were local tourists”.

The nineteen people were all rushed to nearby hospitals, with two people in critical condition, the CDD official added. 

Health Minister Mahmoud Sheyyab visited the injured at Karak Public Hospital and at Prince Ali Military Hospital and wished them a speedy recovery, Petra  reported.

The minister, who was briefed on the patients’ conditions, commended the “quick response” of the authorities to the accident. 

Central Traffic Department statistics from last year showed that 542 people died in around 8,000 accidents in the first nine months of 2016, while there were 1,270 critical injuries and 12,000 minor injuries in the same period.