The high speed train The Haramain, that links the cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, managed by a Spanish consortium and operated by Renfe, suffered an accident this Wednesday when a vehicle fell and caught fire in the vicinity of the railway tracks in the province of Jeddah, which caused an unknown number of injured, with no fatalities.
The Saudi-Spanish Haramain train company detailed in a statement that “at two o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, a traffic accident occurred within the Haramain high-speed train railway area at the intersection of the road of Prince Mohamed bin Abdelaziz in Jeddah province, after a vehicle fell and caught fire.
“The accident did not cause fatalities, thank God,” said the statement published on the official Twitter account of the Haramain train customer service, while “the injured have been transferred to receive the necessary aid,” according to the same source. It did not specify the number of injuries.
In this sense, he assured that an emergency plan was launched and the competent authorities were contacted, in addition, “the damage was recorded immediately and is being fixed”, The company concluded that it asserted that this process “will not affect the circulation of the trains or the schedule of the trips in any way.”
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The AVE from Medina to Mecca, which reaches a maximum commercial speed of 300 kilometers per hour, was inaugurated on October 11, 2018 and was the first high-speed train to operate in a desert environment, as well as the first of its kind. in the Middle East.
All the materials that make up its superstructure, reinforced to face the Saudi heat and prevent deterioration and erosion caused by sand, have been supplied by the Spanish railway sector.