Bus crash kills 2, injures 20 Chinese in Jordan
(China Daily by Wu Gang)
Updated: 2004-02-06 09:05

Two Chinese workers died and 20 others were injured on Wednesday in a head-on crash of their bus with a truck in southern Jordan.

The accident occurred as the Camel Textile International Corporation bus tried to overtake another vehicle, a Chinese embassy official said.

The bus driver, a Jordanian, also died.

All the workers were women working for the company, a Taiwan clothing firm situated in an industrial zone.

Eight of the most seriously hurt were transferred to a hospital in the capital city of Amman. Most of the victims were stabilized, though one remains in a coma.

"She is showing signs of recovery after skull surgery," said Yao Xiaozhao, an embassy spokesman told China Daily yesterday.

The injured women's relatives are being notified through labour-exporting organizations in China, including one in Shanghai and another in Zhoushan of Zhejiang Province.

They will discuss measures to deal with the dead and the wounded. Victims will receive compensations since they were covered by social insurance, life insurance and third-party liability insurance.

Jordan Government officials in charge of industrial zones have visited the Chinese victims in hospital, said Yao.

Camel Textile is the largest foreign enterprises in the Qualified Industrial Zone, a place set up by the United States in 1998 to support the Middle East peace process through providing economic incentives.

The deadly bus accident happened just two days later than a similar tragedy in Thailand, where three Chinese citizens were killed and 21 were injured when a tour bus collided with a train.

One tourist whose thigh bone was badly mangled required an amputation. Another, 51-year-old Wang Fu, is still not very stable because of a serious head injury, doctors said.

China Travel Service, which organized the tour from Shanxi Province, has sent three people to Bangkok to deal with the accident's aftermath.

The company and a partner in Thailand will pay for family members' expenses who will fly to Bangkok soon.