Four killed, several others injured in Ann Twsp traffic accident

By DMG 01 Mar 2022

DMG Newsroom
1 March 2022, Ann

Four people died and 10 others were injured when a vehicle plunged off the road and into a ravine near the village of Kan Myint Kan in Arakan State’s Ann Township on Tuesday morning, according to the village administrator.

The vehicle was transporting two Buddha statues from Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw to Kanhtaunggyi town in Arakan State when the accident occured. Eighteen people including a Buddhist monk and a nun were on board.

“The road was twisting at the place where the accident happened. So, the driver might have lost control of the vehicle. It was quite a horrific accident,” said the village administrator, U Kyaw Kyaw Lwin.

The two Buddha statues were badly damaged in the accident and the injured were rushed to Ann Township Hospital, said U Kyaw Kyaw Lwin.

“They [the survivors] were quite lucky. The chasm was some 60 feet deep. They were lucky that there was a layer of protruding rocks, otherwise they could have fallen down to the bottom,” said the administrator.

The two Buddha statues were being conveyed by monk Bhaddanta Waibula, who resides in Naypyidaw’s Tatkon Township, to be enshrined in his native Kanhtaunggyi, according to Dr. Yan Naing Soe, chairman of the Saydanarshinmyar charity in Kanhtaunggyi.

“Sayadaw [Bhaddanta Waibula] has been building pagodas in his native area. He was in another vehicle when the accident happened,” Dr. Yan Naing Soe told DMG.

Traffic accidents are common on the Ann-Sittwe section of the Sittwe-Yangon road, as it winds its way through a mountainous stretch of terrain.