ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nearly 20 people were injured after a truck caused a chain collision with several other cars near Sulaimani’s Dukan district after losing control, a traffic police spokesperson told Rudaw on Friday.
A truck lost control on the Sulaimani – Dukan road, colliding with 15 other cars and injuring 18 people, Kosrat Abdullah, the spokesperson of the Dukan traffic police station told Rudaw’s Nizar Jaza.
The collision occurred at around 10:50 am on Friday, according to Abdullah, causing several hours of traffic delay on the Sulaimani – Dukan road.
The truck lost control and hit two cars approximately two kilometers away from a police checkpoint in Dukan, crashing into 13 other cars at the checkpoint, according to Abdullah.
Abdullah said that most of the casualties were transported to a hospital in Dukan, and one of them to Sulaimani, noting that "in general, they are in stable health condition.”
Car accidents are a common occurrence in the Kurdistan Region in comparison to many countries.
In November, Bahman Abdullah, spokesperson for Sulaimani traffic police directorate, said they had reported over 600 car accidents in the province from January to August of 2023, resulting in 92 people killed and 2,189 others wounded.
A total of 1,044 car accidents in Sulaimani killed at least 174 and wounded an additional 3,834 in 2022, according to the spokesperson.
Over 3,700 traffic accidents occurred across the Kurdistan Region in 2022, killing at least 445 people and injuring 7,250 others, according to data from the Region’s general traffic police directorate. The data for 2023 is yet to be released.
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