Car accident kills three in Sulaimani

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A traffic accident between two vehicles in Sulaimani city on Friday resulted in the death of three people and the injury of another, according to local authorities. 

The incident took place between a Mazda and Toyota Corolla, leading to the death of the former car’s driver and two passengers and injuring the driver of the latter, Sulaimani traffic police directorate told Rudaw’s Peshawa Bakhtyar following the crash. 

The directorate also said that, based on eye-witness accounts, the Toyota Corolla was moving “very fast” when exiting Peshraw tunnel towards the city’s downtown area, hitting the Mazda which subsequently swerved to the other side of the road. 

The dead are aged between 16 and 26, according to the health directorate. 

Car accidents are a common occurrence in the Kurdistan Region in comparison to many countries. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report from 2018, road traffic injuries were the leading killer of people aged five to 29 globally, and the estimated rate of traffic fatalities per 100,00 population in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region was 20.7 percent in 2016. 

Over 600 people were killed in traffic accidents across the Region in 2021, with more than seven thousand injured, the spokesperson for the Region's traffic department told Rudaw in January.

A car accident on Koya-Erbil road in May led to the death of one passenger and the injury of five others. Another accident between a pickup vehicle and a minibus carrying students on Koya-Ranya highway in the same month injured both drivers and 14 students.