Four killed 'after vice and virtue squad car chase' in Saudi Arabia

Riyadh: In the second horrific incident to take place in northern Saudi Arabia in two weeks, allegedly caused by a "religious police" chase, four people, including two women, were killed on Monday.

Their car veered into a roadside farm after being allegedly chased by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, (known as the religious police) in the Al Khalil area according to police and witnesses.

Witnesses said they saw a commission SUV with two agents and a security officer inside following a white Ford until it crashed into a small farm.

The Commission's agents fled the scene, they added.

One witness said after the car crashed he waved at the Commission's agents to stop but they ignored him, prompting him to report the incident and the SUV's licence plate number to the police.

Another witness confirmed that he saw the commission's SUV at the scene of the crash as it happened.

The Al Oyoun branch of the Madinah police is investigating the incident. A police source said a witnesses reported seeing a white Toyota SUV at the scene right after the crash.

Hot pursuit

Colonel Siraj Kamal, head of the Madinah Traffic Department, told the Okaz newspaper that early information and witnesses accounts suggest the SUV was in hot pursuit of the car.

"If the information and reports are confirmed, the case will be referred to the authorities," he said."

However, the religious police's Madinah branch has denied any involvement in the incident. Its acting director in Madinah Dr Fahd Al Khidr called the allegations "baseless."

"The Commission's agents in the SUV happened to pass by the crash scene while the police were attending it. They were on their way back to the branch after finishing their day duty in the area," he said in a press statement.

Firefighters from Madinah Civil Defence extracted three bodies from the wreckage of the vehicle, said its spokesman Colonel Mansour Al Juhani.

The victims were a 42-year-old woman, a young woman in her twenties and a 25-year-old man.

The driver, aged 30, died of internal bleeding an hour later at the King Fahd Hospital, said the hospital's director Mutwakil Hajaj.

Investigations are still under way regarding the involvement of two commission members in a high speed chase that led to the deaths of a young man and woman in the nearby Tabuk region last month.