Six killed in traffic accident on Mafraq’s ‘death road’

AMMAN — Six people, including four female university students, were killed on Monday in a tragic road accident in Mafraq Governorate, traffic officials said.

The accident, which occurred near Khaldieh Bridge early on Monday morning, involved a trailer, a water tanker and a passenger vehicle, a senior traffic official said.

“A special committee investigating the accident indicated that the drivers of the water tanker and the trailer were both at fault for failing to abide by road safety regulations,” a senior traffic official said.

The strong impact of the accident, the senior traffic official told The Jordan Times, resulted in the immediate death of the six passengers who were in the vehicle.

“The accident caused the water tanker to drive over the vehicle, shaving its roof and killing all the passengers in it,” the traffic official said.

The victims included four Al al-Beit University female students, all aged 21, the driver and another passenger, a second official said. 

Three other people, including the drivers of the trailer and the water tanker, were injured but were listed in fair condition, the second official told The Jordan Times.

A Civil Defence Department official told The Jordan Times that rescue units transported the injured to nearby hospitals and the deceased to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine for “a routine government autopsy”.

Meanwhile, the families of the deceased female students issued a statement lamenting the death of the four young women who were heading to their university when the accident occurred.

The statement called on government officials to find a solution to what they described as the “death road in Khaldieh” by installing street dividers and installing lights on the side of the road.

According to Public Security Department statistics, there were 10,835 road accidents in 2016, resulting in 750 deaths and 17,435 injuries.

The annual cost of traffic accidents in Jordan is $2 billion, accounting for 5.59 per cent of the GDP, according to recent figures released by the Transport Ministry.