One child dead, 22 injured in Saudi road crashes

Cairo: One child was killed and 22 people injured in two road accidents in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The first crash took place on a road linking the governorate of Al Aridhah and the city of Al Khuba in south-western Saudi Arabia, leaving a child dead and 10 other persons wounded, news website Sabq reported.

The car collision was blamed by locals on the poor status of the one-way road stretching for 30 kilometres, claiming it had previously witnessed several fatal accidents.

There was no immediate comment from local authorities on the crash, the cause of which is not clear yet.

The second accident, involving two buses with 47 passengers aboard, left 12 people wounded.

The crash happened on a road linking the capital Riyadh and Taif in western Saudi Arabia.

The injured were transferred to a hospital in Taif with different wounds. They were discharged later, Sabq said. The cause of the accident is not established yet.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has seen a string of road accidents amid stepped-up efforts to reduce them.

In January, four young men were killed and three others injured in a collision between their cars in the Muhayil governorate in south-western Saudi Arabia.

In November, a collision involving three cars killed eight people and critically injured five others on a road in south-western Saudi Arabia.

In September, a bus flipped over, leaving four people dead and seven others wounded in the coastal governorate of Al Wajh in north-western Saudi Arabia.

Some 4,555 people died as a result of traffic accidents in Saudi Arabia in 2022, according to official figures.

There were 16,962 serious road accidents in 2022, down 6.8 per cent against the previous year, the Saudi General Authority for Statistics said.

Those accidents claimed 4,555 lives, with a 2.1% drop compared to 2021.