JEDDAH: The Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the UK offered his condolences on Sunday to the families of four people killed when a coach taking a group of Umrah pilgrims from Makkah to Madinah collided with a fuel tanker near the village of Al-Khalas.
“Our prayers are with these families at this tragic time,” Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf said. The tanker caught fire and set the coach alight. All 16 pilgrims on the coach were from towns in the north of England. Six are being treated in hospital in Makkah.
“If you see the remains of the bus, there’s just the metal frame of it that’s left,” Gulfaraz Zaman, director of Hashim Travel, the British company that organized the trip, told the BBC.
The Saudi Embassy in London is working with the British Foreign Office to issue emergency visas to the relatives of the dead and injured.