The victims were returning from holy Islamic pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia when their car crashed in Pennsylvania, leaving five dead and one injured, Karwan Zebari, the brother of two of the victims told Rudaw’s Naif Ramadhan.
“Around 15 people who are residents of Virginia and New York went to Saudi Arabia for Umrah [Islamic pilgrimage]. They returned through Dulles airport in Virginia and ten of them went to New York in two vehicles, when one of the cars crashed,” he said.
Zebari cited “snowfall and bad road conditions” as reasons behind the accident, saying the van “lost control, hit a guardrail, and then spun upside down” before being struck by an incoming truck that was unable to come to a halt.
Berivan Nimat, 43, and Havrist Nimat, 41, both sisters of Zebari, were among the victims, which also included Berivan’s daughter Alin, 20. The sisters were originally from Akre district in Duhok province and had been in the US since 1994.
The other two victims were identified as Fatima Abdullah and Shahnaz Majid, also Kurds from Duhok, according to information obtained by Rudaw.
In its annual report for 2022, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that an estimated 42,795 people died in traffic-related accidents – an average of 117 deaths per day.
