News

No Sri Lankan casualties in Saudi Arabia fire

31 Aug, 2015

There are no Sri Lankan casualties as a result of the deadly fire at a?residential complex in Khobar city in Saudi Arabia.

The Foreign Ministry said that the Sri Lankan Embassy?in Riyadh is?in contact with local authorities regarding the fire and have?confirmed that there are no Sri Lankan casualties.

Meanwhile the spokesman of Civil Defense in the Eastern Region in Saudi Arabia, Colonel Ali bin Saad Al-Qahtani said that the total casualties of Aramco’s residential complex fire in Khobar city were 259 injured and 10 deaths.

He explained that these total casualties came after the completion of extinguishing the fire, which broke out earlier Sunday in an Aramco rented residential complex in Khobar and the search for missing inside the 8 residential towers.

“The 10 deaths included three Canadians of Asian descent, a Pakistani person and a Nigerian woman”, he said.

Colonel Al-Qahtani said that 179 of the injured people left the hospital after receiving treatment, while there were 80 injured persons, of different nationalities, still receiving treatment.

He pointed out that the preliminary investigations of the accident indicated that the cause of the accident was an electric short circuit in an electrical transformer in the basement area. The basement had 130 cars which caught fire causing the quick spread of fire and smoke in the complex. (Colombo Gazette)

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