At least 40 Saudi truck drivers were physically assaulted in the Sahab city in Jordan, 100 km off the Saudi border, last Friday by an unidentified group of attackers, a Saudi embassy official in Amman said. As the truck drivers from Saudi Arabia and other countries were taking their Iftar meal Friday evening, the group fired shots and threw stones at them, driving them to run for their lives and take a shelter in a nearby mosque, one driver described the incident. Nobody was seriously injured, however, he said. Saudi truck drivers including Mash'al Al-Shammari, Thaqeel Al-Shammari, Aqil Nafe, Malek Al-Inizi, Farhan Al-Shammari, Ahmad Al-Banaq, and Mamdouh Al-Inizi immediately filed a complaint with the Saudi Embassy in Amman, which responded promptly to the incident by sending a representative to investigate the complaint. Accompanied by a Jordanian security force, the official of the Saudi Embassy in Amman, Muhammad Bin Attallah Al-Tuwala, arrived at the scene to investigate the incident. What happened was “unacceptable at all,” said Al-Tuwala. The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be officially notified of the incident, he added. Saudi truck driver Humoud Al-Ruwaili said that the group may have been motivated to attack foreign truck drivers for believing that they have “stolen” the jobs from Jordanians inside their own country. Saudi interstate truck drivers travel long distances between various destinations in the two countries. Earlier, the Jordanian authorities arrested a Saudi truck driver, 60, after he was accused by a Jordanian truck driver of raping a minor boy in Jordan. The Jordanian was said to have filed the alleged complaint of rape against the Saudi truck driver after the two had a fight at the border crossing. The Saudi truck driver was acquitted of the charge and was released Monday, sources said.
