Two young men have died after falling into a water-filled ditch dug for the expansion of the Wadi Mashrafa Bridge at Al-Aridah Center in Jizan. A guard at the site recovered one of the dead bodies while the Civil Defense succeeded in recovering the other body. The families of the two victims have blamed the Civil Defense rescue teams for not having necessary equipment to carry out a proper rescue. Captain Yahya Al-Qahtani, the spokesman for the Civil Defense in Jizan, said the rescue team had reached the scene in record time. He did not comment on the allegations leveled by the two families against the administration. The families also claimed that the absence of the necessary equipment prevented one of the divers from descending into the ditch to help the victims. The two young men, Abdullah Ahmad Aail Bakeri, 14, and Ibrahim Yahyia Ahmad, 16, reportedly left their house in their village “Al-Rakha” west of Al-Aridah governorate, to play football after it had stopped raining. They fell into the ditch because there were allegedly no public safety warning signs erected. The families claimed that the lack of proper equipment resulted in some citizens and relatives of the victims conducting their own search. The guard at the site, Ahmad Al-Sufyani, spent more than two hours in the ditch searching for the bodies.
