JEDDAH: Zainab, a three-year old American girl, drowned in the floodwaters close to the Jamiah Bridge during the flash flooding that ravaged Jeddah on Nov. 25, Al-Madinah daily reported on Thursday. She was traveling with her parents and brothers to celebrate Eid with their relatives in Jazan.
“We were stopped by the huge traffic bottleneck near the Jamiah Bridge on the Haramain Expressway,” said the father of the girl, Ahsan Abbas, while choking back tears.
“The rising water on the road and inability to move forward or backward forced us to abandon the car and walk toward the university wall. I carried Zainab on my shoulders. But when I stumbled a Saudi man passing by offered to carry her. My wife, mother and myself were walking behind him. We had just walked a few meters when he tripped and lost his balance. Zainab fell in the water. However, he managed to get up and catch the girl before she drifted away. Again we inched forward and he was carrying her. The current had become stronger by this time. The Saudi stumbled again and fell with my daughter farther in to the water. They disappeared in the surging water in a few seconds.” He said he went back there next day and searched for her everywhere. There was no trace of her. Then finally he found her in a morgue at University Hospital. He said her body was laid to rest at Faisaliah Cemetery.
