{"id":290432,"date":"2025-11-17T13:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T13:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/290432\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T13:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T13:12:10","slug":"dozens-of-indian-pilgrims-killed-in-bus-accident-in-saudi-arabia-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/290432\/","title":{"rendered":"Dozens of Indian pilgrims killed in bus accident in Saudi Arabia, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dozens of <a href=\"http:\/\/9news.com.au\/india-news\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Indian\">Indian<\/a> pilgrims are feared dead after a <a href=\"http:\/\/9news.com.au\/buses\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"bus\">bus<\/a> collision near the holy city of Medina in <a href=\"http:\/\/9news.com.au\/saudi-arabia\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Saudi Arabia\">Saudi Arabia<\/a>, Indian officials say.<\/p>\n<p>The bus with 46 people onboard was travelling from Mecca to Medina when it collided with a diesel tanker on a highway, Gaurav Uppal, a senior official of Telangana state, told The Associated Press on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Around 45 people from Telangana are feared dead in the accident, while one person is injured,&#8221; said Uppal, who is based out of New Delhi and is one of the key officials coordinating rescue efforts with Indian authorities in Saudi.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/cbcd15f6-6aff-4fa7-ae4c-f2a3dc6f1906.jpeg\"   alt=\"\"\/>The bus was heading for the Saudi holy city of Medina. (AP Photo\/Nariman El-Mofty)<\/p>\n<p>Relatives of the victims gathered outside the office of the Fly Zone travel agency, in Hyderabad, seeking information about their family members.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and Telangana&#8217;s highest-elected official, Revanth Reddy, offered condolences to the bereaved families.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on X, Jaishankar said the Indian embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah were offering support to the relatives of the victims.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed Tehseen said seven members of his family were on the bus, of which all but one had died. The injured survivor had &#8220;called after the accident to inform us about the tragedy&#8221;, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Vishwanath Channappa Sajjanar, the police chief of Telangana&#8217;s state capital, Hyderabad, said preliminary reports suggests that at least 18 of the deceased were from Hyderabad. <\/p>\n<p>He said most of the victims were from two families, and that the injured passenger was named as Mohammed Shoaib.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I spoke to the Consul General of India and got the details,&#8221; Sajjanar told a press conference. &#8220;There were 46 people in the bus and one passenger survived with injuries.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sajjanar said the police was in contact with the travel agency through which the pilgrims had traveled to Saudi Arabia.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of Indian pilgrims are feared dead after a bus collision near the holy city of Medina in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-290432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}