AL-LAITH, 8 July 2004 — Sixteen people were killed and one received minor injuries in a head-on collision between a pickup truck and a heavy lorry here on Tuesday.
All the dead passengers were illegal overstayers who were making their way to Makkah. Both drivers were Saudi.
The accident happened after the pickup driver, who offered to transport the overstayers, tried to overtake another vehicle on the highway. As he did so, he collided head on with a heavy lorry, killing himself and his 13 passengers almost instantly.
The driver of the oncoming truck suffered minor injuries.
Police closed the highway for two hours as rescue teams and ambulances attended the scene and removed the bodies. A spokesman for the police said the driver of the pickup truck was entirely to blame for the accident.
In Dammam, four cars collided and burst into flames on the Dammam-Alkhobar expressway on Tuesday afternoon, Okaz reported. No one was reported killed or injured in the accident.
In another road accident, a 20-year-old man in Makkah died as a result of a major accident after five cars collided on the Madinah Road in the Omrah neighborhood.
The victim was driving at very high speed and crashed into five parked cars starting a big fire. A 12-year-old Pakistani boy was seriously injured when he was thrown out of the parked car and crashed to the ground ten meters away as a result of the collision. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital.
