At least 14 people have been killed and 30 others injured in a major traffic accident involving 23 vehicles in the emirate of Fujairah, in what Reuters described as one of the deadliest road accidents in the history of the United Arab Emirates. The pile-up happened shortly before midnight on Wednesday on Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Road, near the entrance to Fujairah.
According to a statement from the UAE Ministry of Interior, a truck driver lost control of his vehicle and collided with another vehicle, causing both to veer off the road and smash into several vehicles that were stationary because of slow-moving traffic. The truck overturned and caught fire, and the flames spread to several of the vehicles around it, turning a traffic queue into a pile-up of 18 cars and five trucks.
Emergency teams worked through the night at the scene, and the ministry said its casualty figures were preliminary, with further information to follow once it had been verified. Fujairah Police said 15 of the 30 injured people had been discharged from hospital after receiving medical care, while 15 remained under treatment.
The dead included Emirati nationals and several foreigners, and DNA tests are being carried out to identify some of the victims. The injured included nationals of the UAE, Oman, India, Brazil, Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, the ministry said, and the Indian Consulate General in Dubai confirmed that Indian nationals were among those killed.
Among those who lost their lives were three members of an Indian expatriate family from Kerala: 21-year-old twin siblings Mohamed Asmi Siddique and Misna Jubin Siddique, along with their three-year-old nephew, Muhammed Faiz. The family was returning to Fujairah from Sharjah when the accident happened, and the twins are to be buried with their nephew in the UAE.
The crash happened on the main road into the emirate from Dubai and Sharjah, a route that carries thousands of vehicles a day between the Gulf coast and the east coast. The accident occurred around 11pm on 11 November, according to the family, and the ministry said the collision took place shortly before midnight.
Fujairah Police have launched an investigation to establish the cause of the crash and have urged the public not to circulate unverified claims about the victims, casualty figures or nationalities. The central question is still unanswered: the police have said the driver lost control, but not what made him lose it.
The ministry has stressed that the toll is preliminary and that verified updates will follow. The full list of the dead has not been released, and the identities of several victims are still being established through DNA testing.
For the UAE, the crash is a rare large-scale road disaster. The country has invested heavily in road safety, but the Fujairah pile-up shows how quickly a single loss of control on a busy road can turn into a mass-casualty event, especially when fire spreads through stationary traffic.
The investigation now under way will decide the first questions — what made the driver lose control, whether the truck was roadworthy, and whether anything could have prevented the fire from spreading. For the families of the 14 who died, and for the 15 still in hospital, the answers cannot come soon enough.
