The third night of Ramadan marked the deaths of six more people in Qatar, all young men, in a road accident on Rawdat al Rashid, hours after the demise of six other men who were run over by a vehicle near Lusail City.
Media reports about this latest accident offer conflicting details about what happened late Thursday night, but the victims appear to be five Qataris and one man from elsewhere in the Gulf.
Five of the victims were killed instantaneously after a reportedly head-on collision with another vehicle on the road. The sixth died en route to the hospital, the Peninsula reports.
According to Al Raya, the victims ranged in age from 18 to 23 years old. Al Arab, which cited excessive speed as the cause of the accident, said the victims were younger, between 15 and 19 years old.
UPDATE | 3:46 pm
On Twitter, Nasser Al Ahmadani, a close family friend of the victims, tells us that they were very young:
@dohanews Four of them were 17. One of them was 19. And the sixth one was 15.
— Nasser Al Ahmadani (@NAlAhmadani)
The deaths come amid a Qatar-backed road safety campaign encouraging people to drive more safely on the roads.
The “One Second” initiative urges residents to buckle up, put away their mobile phones and pay attention to the road.
Meanwhile, Gulf Times reports that the victims killed at Lusail, all low-income workers, have been identified as Phatwari Chaudhari, Vivekananda Saha, Ramchandra Mahato, Arjun Gautam and Assaram Tharu (all Nepalese) and Augustine (Indian).
All had been in Qatar for little over a month, a Nepalese embassy official told the newspaper.
Several others were injured as they lay in the shade on Thursday afternoon waiting for a bus to take them to their accommodation.
A seventh man, who was identified as an Indian national named Jose, suffered “clinical death,” but was resuscitated. It remains unclear whether he sustained any long-term injuries.
Gulf Times added:
Among Qatar’s expatriate communities, the Nepalese have lost the largest number of lives in recent years in road accidents. On June 11, three Nepalese had lost their lives in an accident on the Salwa Road.
There were also other road accidents in which Nepalese pedestrians had lost their lives in the last 45 days, according to the embassy official.
Thoughts?
Credit: Photo for illustrative purposes only by Joey Coleman