KUWAIT CITY: Fifteen workers with an oil drilling company were killed in a head-on collision between two buses in southern Kuwait on Sunday, the fire department said.
Fire department spokesman Col. Khalil Al-Amir told AFP that the victims, mostly Asian expats, were employees of Burgan Drilling, a private subcontractor.
Four other workers were hospitalized, some in critical condition, Amir said, without giving the nationalities of the casualties.
The Kuwait Oil Company said in a statement that the victims of Sunday’s head-on bus collision include seven Indians, five Egyptians and three Pakistanis. At least two Indian workers and a Kuwaiti were injured in the accident.
The company says the buses were transporting employees of contracting firms that work for the Kuwait Oil Company, and that the crash took place after the end of the workers’ shift.
The crash occurred near Burgan oil field, in the southeastern desert.
The company says ambulances and helicopters were dispatched to the site of the crash to assist in rescue operations.
Bus collision kills 15 oil workers in Kuwait
Bus collision kills 15 oil workers in Kuwait
Election of new Iraqi president delayed by Kurds
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament postponed the election of a president on Tuesday to allow Kurdish rivals time to agree on a candidate.
Parliamentary Speaker Haibat Al-Halbussi received requests from Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to postpone the vote to allow both parties more time to reach a deal.
By convention, a Shi’ite holds the powerful post of prime minister, the parliamentary Speaker is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.
Under a tacit agreement between the two main Kurdish parties, a PUK member holds the Iraqi presidency, while the president and regional premier of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region is selected from the KDP. But this time the KDP has named Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein as its own candidate for the presidency.
Once elected, the president will then have 15 days to appoint a prime minister, widely expected to be Nouri Al-Maliki, who held the post from 2006 to 2014. The shrewd 75-year-old politician is Iraq’s only two-term premier since the 2003 US-led invasion.
The Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shi’ite parties that holds a parliamentary majority, has already endorsed Maliki.
