JEDDAH, 14 December 2002 — A nine-year-old Saudi boy drowned in an open water tank near a school building under construction in Um Al-Sulm district on Wednesday.
The Civil Defense Department sent two teams to rescue the boy from the 2.5-meter-deep tank, which was built to cater for construction of the school building. The boy was taken to a nearby clinic and then to Al-Thagher Hospital where doctors declared him dead.
Col. Mohammed Al-Ghamdi, director of the department, said his organization had launched a probe into the incident and held the contractor responsible for keeping the tank open without any cover.
The authorities had the tank closed to prevent similar accidents. The new school was under construction in a residential area. Hasan Al-Ghamdi, uncle of the victim, said they were searching for the boy in the neighborhood for more than an hour after Maghreb.
“When they did not find the boy, they suspected that he would have fallen in the open water tank and called the civil defense to look for him inside the tank,” he explained.
Meanwhile, a Bangladeshi expatriate worker, 29, was killed on Wednesday on a bridge in Alawa, three kilometers east of Turba, when his cycle was hit by a car in the middle of the bridge. The man was thrown off the bridge as a result of the impact of the collision. The Saudi driver of the car has been held for questioning.
