Although more than a dozen people have been released from Hamad Hospital two days after a bus driver lost control of his vehicle, a handful of men who suffered more serious wounds remain under care.

Recounting the moment when a Mowasalat bus drove into a crowd of passengers at the main bus station in Al Ghanim, a 49-year-old Indian expat told Doha News he was “lucky.”

“I’m in a state of shock, it all happened too fast,” Najeeb Thazathiyal, who works in the Industrial Area, told Doha News through a relative who acted as a translator. 

Describing the moment, he said:

“I remember sitting in the bus shelter, when the bus rammed into me, and the shelter collapsed. The bus seemed to stop at me – but there were three other men sitting further forward to my left, and I don’t think they were so lucky.”

Thazathiyal suffered shoulder injuries and has a fractured hand, which surgeons at Hamad Hospital operated to correct yesterday. He’s still in pain, but is feeling better, he said.

He is sharing a room with two others who were injured in the accident – one Bangladeshi man in his 60s who has a fractured rib cage, and a Nepalese expat, whose exact injuries are unknown. 

Thazathiyal is expected to remain in the hospital for the next few days. He doesn’t know how many other people were injured, and Mowasalat officials have not been in contact with him, nor made any public statements.

According to witnesses, the Karwa bus drove into a throng of people sitting under a bus shelter around 5pm on Sunday evening. Photos show parts of the shelter and at least two steel benches where passengers had been sitting to be badly damaged.

The Peninsula reports that nine out of 13 people thought to have been injured in the accident have left Hamad after receiving treatment for “minor injuries.” The injured are all expats, hailing from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nepal and India.

Rumors are also circulating that some passengers were killed in the accident, but embassy and hospital officials have not confirmed any deaths.

The Peninsula also states that the bus driver, reported to be from Ghana, is now in police custody. Unnamed sources claim he accidentally hit the accelerator of the No. 11 bus on the Matar Qadeem area route, instead of the brake.

The incident is once again opening up discussion on dangerous driving in Qatar, with residents on social media calling on Mowasalat to better train and treat its drivers.

Thoughts?

Credit: Second photo by Qazi Waseem Shahzad