Stock Jeddah skyline
The crash happened on Saturday on a road linking Najran and the city of Sharura. Jeddah skyline used for illustrative purposes only. Image Credit: Shutterstock

Cairo: A passenger bus overturned in Najran in Saudi Arabia’s south-west Saudi Arabia, killing one person and injuring 28 others, Saudi media reported, citing a local medical official.

The crash happened on Saturday on a road linking Najran and the city of Sharura.

Spokesman for the Saudi Red Crescent in Najran said the agency’s operations room had been alerted about the accident by road security authorities and a citizen.

Saudi Arabia

“Coordination was made with competent security and health authorities to handle the aftermath. Support teams were sent as the Health Ministry dispatched five medical teams,” the official added.

The cause of the mishap is not clear yet.

The crash was the second of its kind reported in Saudi Arabia in less than a week.

On Wednesday, a bus carrying university students collided with a car in Saudi Arabia’s central city of Buraidah, leaving one female student dead and 24 others injured, their university said.

The collision caused the bus to flip over, and one student died after sustaining serious injuries, Qassim University added in a statement.

In recent years, Saudi authorities have toughened penalties against traffic offences to reduce road crashes.

The annual cost of traffic accidents in Saudi Arabia is estimated at around SR11.7 billion.

Around 9,420 accidents were registered inside the kingdom’s cities against 7,542 outside them last year, according to official figures.

Those accidents resulted in a total of 4,555 deaths.

Male drivers outpaced women involved in those mishaps, according to the report based on findings by a ministerial committee for traffic safety.

In recent months, Saudi media reported several deadly accidents.

Last month, three people were killed and four others injured due to a road crash blamed on rainy weather in Taif in western Saudi Arabia

In March, 21 Umrah pilgrims were killed and 29 others injured when their bus flipped over in the south-west Asir region.