Two vehicles, carrying students and schoolteachers, on Sunday collided in south-western Saudi Arabia, leaving nine injured, local media said.

A minibus transporting female teachers and schoolchildren collided into a vehicle carrying students in the early morning in the governorate of Al Makhwah in Al Baha region, reported Saudi news portal Sabq.

Four teams from the Saudi Red Crescent were sent to the scene of the accident, the cause of which was not immediately clear.

The victims sustaining various injuries were transported to a local hospital.

Five suffered medium injuries, three others had minor wounds while a person was seriously injured, a local spokesman for the Red Crescent told Saudi news website Ajel.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has witnessed a string of road accidents amid stepped-up efforts to reduce them.

Last November, a collision involving three cars killed eight people and critically injured five others on a road in south-western Saudi Arabia.

A month earlier, an expatriate was killed and four Saudis injured in a collision between cars in Saudi Arabia’s south-western city of Al Baha.

Earlier in October, a female schoolteacher was killed and five others injured in a road crash while they were on their way to their school in the city of Yanbu in western Saudi Arabia.

In September, a bus flipped over, leaving four people dead and seven others wounded in the coastal governorate of Al Wajh in north-western Saudi Arabia.

In May, a bus, carrying university students, collided with a car in the central city of Buraidah, leaving one female student dead and 24 others injured.

Some 4,555 people died as a result of traffic accidents in Saudi Arabia in 2022, according to official figures.

The number of serious road accidents were 16,962 in 2022, down 6.8 per cent against the previous year, the Saudi General Authority for Statistics said. These accidents claimed 4,555 lives, with a 2.1 per cent drop compared to 2021.