ABHA, 11 December — Three children, all under the age of 12, drowned on Saturday in a well in Madinah Sultan, a village on the Abha-Khamis road in Asir province in the southern part of the Kingdom.
When a shepherd boy accidentally fell in to the deep well without a protective wall, his two elder brothers went down the well in a bid to save the drowning child.
They too fell into the water. As no one witnessed the accident, the boys were discovered only after several hours, by which time the three boys had died.
Asir Governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal directed all the tribal chiefs in the province to take immediate steps to build protective barriers around wells in their respective jurisdiction.
Ahmad Al-Shareef, director general of Civil Defense in the province, said the reports of drowning accidents in wells were increasing because new wells have recently been dug in large numbers.
Al-Sahreef said the mouth of such wells should be 1.5 meters high and another 1.5-meter high iron fence should be built around them. The well should also have a ladder with iron hand-grips. The director also ordered that pumps should not be installed inside wells.
Also yesterday, a nine-year-old boy drowned in a large underground water tank in a building under construction in Madinah, Al-Bilad newspaper reported.
The boy, identified only as Al-Zahrani, was playing with his friends in the building under construction near his own house when he fell into the water tank. The other boys immediately shouted for help and the Civil Defense men were called. By the time he was lifted out of the water, the boy was unconscious. He was rushed to hospital after first aid, but died on the way.
