JEDDAH, 9 October 2005 — Twenty one passengers, including 14 members of a single Saudi family, were burned to death in a horrific road crash in Jizan on Thursday. The crash involved an oil tanker, a pickup truck, a sedan and two SUVs, press reports said. Thirteen others were injured in the accident, some of them critically, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported. All of those killed are believed to have been traveling in a single SUV.

The crash took place at a bend in the road near the village of Al-Humaira in the southeastern region of Jizan, which is on the Red Sea coast near the border with Yemen.

The accident occurred when the sedan overtook the tanker at high speed and lost control, hitting the tanker and causing the other vehicles to crash as well, a security source said.

Both the tanker and the SUV carrying the family flipped over and burst into flames, killing all of the occupants of the SUV. The driver of the tanker was among the injured.

Security authorities were trying to identify the victims whose bodies have been transferred to Jizan General Hospital. The injured passengers are receiving treatment at Ardha Hospital and King Fahd Hospital.

The accident occurred when a family was traveling in five cars to attend a wedding. Witnesses said the truck did not have its lights on.

Petroleum-based substances flew in all directions as a result of the impact and the ensuing fire melted parts of the cars and the truck totally disfiguring the bodies. Bystanders and those driving by stopped to try to rescue the people involved in the accident as well as remove any flammable parts to avoid spreading the accident.

Ardha police have launched an investigation to find out the cause of the accident. Col. Ibrahim Al-Hamzi, head of security patrols in the region, blamed speeding and overtaking in an inappropriate manner for the incident. The head of the fire department said his team had managed to put out the fire and take out the burned bodies. “Identification of the bodies was done in the presence of relatives,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s highest road accident rates and reports some half a million casualties from road accidents annually, 12 percent of which are fatal and around 10 percent involve underage drivers.

According to a senior traffic officer in Riyadh, 40 percent of road accidents were due to speeding and running red lights. “An average of 130 to 150 accidents occur daily on the Riyadh streets including one or two fatal ones,” the officer said.

Hamza Shengiti, who works and lives in Qunfuda and travels frequently to Najran and Jizan, told Arab News that the traffic authorities must control movement of large trucks and tankers on roads to reduce accidents. “If they prevent trucks on the Jizan road from 7 a.m. until 12 in the midnight it will help cut accidents by 70 percent,” he said. He praised the action taken by Madinah Governor Prince Muqrin as he prevented trucks on the Yanbu-Madinah Road during busy hours.