JEDDAH, 11 May 2004 — “I was sitting in the back of the bus sleeping. I don’t remember the crash but I woke up when I heard the screaming. Nobody was wearing their seatbelt,” says Masarath Sultana.

She was lucky to survive yesterday’s catastrophic crash of the Indian school bus on the Makkah Expressway which killed seven of her schoolmates and a teacher and left another 15 students and a second teacher injured.

Sultana, like most of those injured in the accident, has now been discharged from hospital, but the surviving teacher and five students remain in different Jeddah hospitals.

A brother of two sisters in intensive care who asked not to be named said one of his sisters had to have surgery to repair her broken left arm. “My sisters are 11 and 15,” he said.

Those still in hospital were Najma Sayeed, a teacher in the 3-5 block, and students Salma Abdus Salaam (IX) and Hanan H. Rehman (VI) in Al-Thagr Hospital; Ayesha Madurakarian (VIII) in King Abdul Aziz Hospital and Naureen Shaikh (VI) in King Fahd Hospital.

Julian Wycliffe, a nurse at King Abdul Aziz Medical City, said incidents like these can be traumatic for children and leave mental scars. “Since it was early in the morning and the children were sleeping on the bus, many don’t remember what happened,” he said.

At Al-Thagr Hospital, run by the Ministry of Health, three injured girls were being treated.

“Dr. M. Ghamdi and his staff were extremely helpful and assured us that every care will be taken while treating the injured,” said Dr. Yousuf Khan Javeed, the chairman of the school’s managing committee.

Two girls had an even luckier escape: they decided not to go to school for the day. Engineer M. Abid, the father of one of them, said the bus left the holy city around 7 a.m. as usual and within 10 or 15 minutes he received a phone call informing him of the crash.

Leaders of the Indian community were first alerted to the accident when the daughter of Indian Ambassador Kamaluddin Ahmed, on her way from Makkah to Jeddah to join her father, spotted the wreck and rang the ambassador and Consul Genral Syed Akbaruddin.

Both went to the scene and then to King Abdul Aziz Medical City, where accident victims had been taken by police and Civil Defense ambulances.

There they were joined by Yousef Ali Milibari, director of foreign education at the Ministry of Education, Makkah Region, Hifzur Rahman of the consulate and Yousuf Khan Javeed accompanied by two other committee members, Dr. M. Mohsin and Ali Sumesh.

Khan said he would not like to comment on what caused the accident until police reports were made available.

“We hope to succeed in seeking the release of the driver with the help of the local education and other authorities and then find out from him what exactly caused the accident,” he said.

According to Khan, the driver is in a state of shock as he has lost two of his daughters — Haifa and Harsha — and a third daughter — Hanan — is in hospital. “His wife is in Makkah and may not know that the tragedy has happened,” Khan said.

The school says the driver has an excellent track record and has not had an accident in 20 years of working for IISJ, according to the head of the school’s transport department.

“We have our own workshop where we undertake maintenance of our fleet of 85 buses and other vehicles and send those needing major repair to our designated workshops,” School Vice Principal and acting Director E.K. Muhammad Shafi told reporters.

Parents, however, blamed the accident on poor maintenance of vehicles by the school’s transport section. One of them said the supervisor of the bus fleet was retained in his job despite evident inefficiency. “If this supervisor is not replaced, we could see more such accidents,” he said.

According to a recent study, about 86 percent of minibuses carrying girl students and teachers in the Kingdom do not undergo regular checks, and as many as 20 percent are old or have the wrong tires.

The atmosphere in both the boys’ and girls’ sections of IISJ was quiet as most of the children knew little or nothing of the accident.

The school has 9,500 students in both sections — 4,500 girls and 5,000 boys. There are more than 700 staff, which include 400 teachers, 87 drivers and about 70 in administration. Eight buses — four each for boys and girls — take children from Makkah to the school every day. The consulate remained open round-the-clock to assist parents seeking custody of bodies.

— Additional input by Essam Al-Ghalib