Four people died and two injured in three car accidents in Kirkuk on September 10th, sources told KirkukNow.
The three accidents took place on Kirkuk-Duz Khurmatu highway.
One of the accidents was crash of to Ford vehicles where a gynecologist and his two daughters passed away, a source in Duz Khumatu told KirkukNow. The family were residents of Duz Khumatu, district south of Kirkuk,
The multi-ethnic district of Duz Khurmatu, located 70 kilometers south of Kirkuk and part of Salahaddin province, is one of the disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad, home to 130,000 Turkmens, Kurds and Arabs.
A young doctor passed away on the way to hospital following a car accident yet no details about the whereabouts of the traffic accident.
The third accident took place when a tractor hit a Toyota land Cruiser where two people were injured and hospitalized in Duz Khurmatu public hospital.
Drivers in general and particularly Kirkuk-Baghdad taxi drivers complain of the poor conditions of the highway near Duz Khurmatu which they call (Death Road) due to frequent fatal accidents.
"The roads in our area are in bad condition because neither Kirkuk administration, nor Salahaddin want to renovate it," Hassan Zainalabidin, mayor of Duz Khurmatu, told KirkukNow in a story last February.
"I have asked that office to maintain the roads but they care only about Kirkuk administration road, I really don’t know why. Salahaddin administration unfortunately does not respond to us."
Administratively Duz Khurmatu is under Salahaddin province but the office in charge of roads and bridge is under Kirkuk administration.
Located 238 kilometers north of Baghdad, Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed province for 1.2 million Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen, Muslims, Christians and Kaka'is. It has long been at the center of disputes between Baghdad and the Erbil.
The province misses proper utilities of power supply, drinking water, garbage collection, and basic health care and education system badly hurt by corruption and long years of war and instability.
