Two ministers resign after Jordan schoolbus deaths

Jordan’s education and tourism ministers resigned yesterday, a week after a deadly school-bus accident in the floodhit Dead Sea region, a government official said. The October 25 floods in the popular tourist destination cost 21 lives, most of them children on a school trip.

“Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah and Tourism Minister Lina Annab today submitted their resignation to Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz,” the official said. Annab herself wrote on Twitter she was stepping down “in the shadow of the general political climate and the painful period”.

Several members of parliament called earlier this week for the two ministers to be dismissed because the outing had been authorised despite warnings of bad weather. The pupils, their teachers and minders had stepped out of their bus in a tourist area called Al-Miyah al-Sakhina when they were hit by a flash flood that washed them towards the nearby Dead Sea.