Motor accident kills 3 family members in western Sudan's "highway of death"
March 16, 2008 (En Nahud NSV) - Three members of a family perished in a motor accident on Saturday evening 5km east of En Nahud, Kordofan.
Two cousins and their sister with a baby girl were approaching home when their car, Atoz, lost balance and overturned in the middle of a tarmac.
Due to darkness and traffic investigation requirement, the bodies of the two men and their sister were buried on Sunday morning.
The little girl was rushed to El-Obeid for urgent operation. Preliminary cause of the accident according to local traffic police is being attributed to a tyre that got flattened, leaving the car to slide at the side of the highway still under construction.
The New Sudan Vision was on the spot of the accident after police siren alerted the town. Details later revealed that the girl that survived the accident was operated to repair her damaged head scalp, while the driver of the unfortunate Atoz who broke his legs is receiving treatment at En Nahud Teaching Hospital.
Hundreds of the town's citizens began paying condolences to the bereaved family on Saturday.
The controversial Western Salvation Highway, which has become 'highway of death' is considered one of the contributing causes of the current war in Darfur. The highway has not reached the town of En Nahud since 1995 when Eastern European based road company, Petrocost Road Company, started work to link Khartoum and Darfur. The company is set out to pave the road till it reaches the town of En Nahud.
The highway is scheduled to be extended to Darfur as planned by the architects of the National Islamic Front (NIF) after the coup in 1989. Some top NIF members now in exile are being blamed for embezzling the money allotted for the construction of the Western Salvation highway which was expected to reach Fasher in Darfur before 2000, three years earlier before Darfur rebellion.
In December last year, a car carrying an engineer and a driver got into accident on the same highway, killing the two on board. A week later, a Toyota Land Cruiser overturned in Jebel Hidub, En Nahud, Kordofan, killing three.
