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Test confirms missing national women in Saudi Arabia are dead

RAS AL KHAIMAH — Finally the riddle of the two UAE national women missing in Saudi Arabia has been solved with the fingerprint matching test yesterday confirming their death.

The fingerprint samples of the two RAK-based women matched with those of the two unidentified corpses. The two bodies were among the victims of the collapse of the Al Khair Hotel that took place on January 5 in the holy city of Makkah. "We finally found the bodies of Halima, 33, and Mona Abdullah Hassan Al Naqbi, 28," Mohammed Ali bin Omran, UAE General-Consul in Jeddah, told Khaleej Times over the phone. The two ladies were living in Gaza Hotel, which is located next to the one that collapsed.

The dead body of Halima was mistakenly delivered to the Al Ain-based UAE national family, whose daughter died in the hotel collapse. The corpse of Mona, which remained for several days in the morgue of Al Maissim Hospital, was handed over to a Bangladeshi physician living in Saudi Arabia mistaking it for his wife's body. Both bodies were buried in the Holly city of Makkah, Bin Omran said.

"This discovery confirms the assumption of the RAK Police Department (RPD) that the two national women died in the hotel collapse.

The Saudi authorities failed to recognise them probably because their bodies were badly disfigured and became beyond recognition coupled with the heap of rubble and dust at the site," Brigadier General Shaikh Talib bin Saqer Al Qasimi, Director-General of RPD, said in a statement issued earlier.

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