Yemen Monitor / Newsroom:
Abyan Governorate (southern Yemen) witnessed a horrific traffic accident on Friday morning that claimed the lives of a man and his four children while they were riding a motorcycle on the Zinjibar– Ja’ar road, after being struck by a military vehicle.
In an official statement, Abyan Security Department explained that the accident occurred at around 8:30 a.m., when a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by Colonel Abdulrahman al-Shanini, head of Counterterrorism in the governorate, collided with a motorcycle ridden by citizen Mohammed Ali Salem Ali, who was accompanied by his four children (two sons and two daughters). All five died instantly at the scene.
The statement added that a traffic police field team, led by Lt. Col. Ahmed al-Haddi, immediately responded to the site. Initial investigations concluded that the crash was due to a “shared fault by both parties,” as documented in photos attached to the statement.
According to the security department, Colonel al-Shanini voluntarily surrendered himself to traffic police after the accident and was detained at Abyan Security Department pending legal procedures, with the case to be referred later to the Traffic Prosecution.
The statement stressed that the accident was “purely accidental and traffic-related,” warning against attempts to politicize the incident or exploit it for purposes beyond its reality, while confirming that security authorities are committed to following up the case within legal frameworks.
It further noted that Colonel al-Shanini was accompanied by Brigadier General Haidara al-Sayyid, commander of the Security Belt Forces in Abyan, and they were on their way to the coast to meet the security director as part of the governorate’s daily security program.
