Muscat: “I heard people screaming. I saw blood all over the bus seats before I fell unconscious,” recalls Mohammad Akram, a Bangladeshi worker who survived the bus crash in Oman last week that claimed two lives and injured 35 others.
Mohammad says he was sleeping when the bus crashed into a truck on Friday morning.
“I woke up when I heard a deafening sound,” he said.
Akram remembers seeing broken glass and debris everywhere.
Some passengers had been thrown out of the bus by the impact of the crash and were screaming for help.
He says he had to climb out of the bus through a broken window because the main door was jammed.
“I still can’t get over the shock,” he told Gulf News in a phone interview after he was discharged from the hospital the same day of the crash.
Thankfully, he only sustained light injuries to his hands and legs — four other victims remain in critical condition at the hospital.
The two vehicle drivers, an Indian and a Pakistani, died on the spot.
The bus was carrying 41 passengers, from the capital Muscat to the southern city of Salalah, when the accident occurred around 7am in the Haima province, according to Salalah Line Transport Company officials, which operates the service.
The injured passengers were airlifted by the Royal Oman Police helicopters to Nizwa Hospital.
Police said the accident was caused by wrongful overtaking, without specifying which party was to blame.
The bodies of the victims are expected to be repatriated to their home countries this week.
Last year in March, a Dubai-bound bus was hit by a truck in Oman’s western desert killing at least 18 people and injuring 16 others — a passing car later slammed into the wreckage,
Investigations revealed that the driver of the truck lost control after a tyre burst.
The truck skidded off across the road and rammed into a bus carrying 45 passengers, owned by the Gulf Transport Company, heading to Dubai from Salalah.
A total of 692 people were killed in road accidents in 2016, compared to 975 in 2015, according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Speeding and wrong overtaking have been cited as the main causes of road accidents in the country.
