Mar 24: Saudi Arabia has recorded its first death from the coronavirus in a 51-year-old Afghani resident, Health Ministry spokesman Mohammed Abdelali told a televised news conference on Tuesday.
The man's health deteriorated quickly after reporting to a hospital emergency room in the city of Medina and he died on Monday night, Abdelali said.
Apr 20: Eight Indians, including two engineers, have died due to the novel coronavirus in Saudi Arabia, according to a media report on Sunday.
Mohammed Aslam Khan, an electrical engineer in Makkah, and Azmatullah Khan, an engineer at the Makkah Haram power station, have died due to the COVID-19, Saudi Gazette reported.
Aslam Khan, aged 51, who hailed from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, was admitted to King Faisal Hospital, Makkah on April 3, following worsening of his condition after being infected with fever and throat pain.
He had been on ventilator for more than two weeks and breathed his last on Saturday night, the paper said.
Khan is survived by wife and a daughter and a son. His wife and children are under self-imposed home quarantine.
Azmatullah Khan, from Telangana, died of coronavirus on Friday.
Mujeeb Pukkottoor, a prominent Indian social worker and general secretary of Makkah chapter of Kerala Muslim Cultural Center, told the paper that the body of Khan was buried in Makkah on Sunday.
Khan, aged 65, had been working with Saudi Binladin Group for the last 32 years.
Fakre Alam, an employee at the Haram Project of Saudi Binladin Group in Makkah, died on Sunday due to infection, the paper said.
Barkt Ali Abdullatif Fakir, an electrical technician working in Medina, also died of coronavirus, it said.
According to the Saudi Ministry of Health’s daily report published on April 14, the number of coronavirus infected cases among workers of Saudi Binladin Group in various parts of the Kingdom stood at 117, and these included 70 cases in Makkah.
The first two Indian fatalities were reported from Medina and Riyadh earlier this month with the death of Shebnaz Pala Kandiyil (29) and Safvan Nadamal (41), both from Kerala.
Mohammed Sadiq, from Hyderabad, working in Jeddah and Suleman Sayyid Junaid (Maharashtra) are other Indians who died due to COVID-19 in the Gulf kingdom, the paper said.
Shebnaz from Panoor in Kannoor district died on April 3 and his body was buried in Medina on April 7. He came back to the Kingdom March 3 after his marriage in January.
Safvan, a taxi driver from Chemmad in Malappuram district, died on April 2 and was buried in Riyadh on April 8.
Dubai, May 26: An Indian expat, who recently recovered from COVID-19, fell to his death from a building in Dubai, police said.
The 26-year-old Indian national identified as Neelath Muhammed Firdous from Kerala, fell from the seventh floor balcony of his building where he stayed with six others including his uncle, Naushad Ali, 33.
A Dubai Police official confirmed the incident to Gulf News on Monday and said it had been a suicide.
"He was suffering from a mental disorder and there is no criminal suspicions behind his death," said the official.
"The incident happened on Sunday," the official confirmed.
The victim's relative said: "(He) awoke early to perform prayers and everyone was getting on with their daily morning chores when he walked to the balcony and jumped.
"He was suffering from a mental disorder and had been disturbed for some time. He thought everyone was out to attack him and had stopped eating his food as he thought people were feeding him poison. He was refusing to even take water from us."
The victim had tested positive for COVID-19 on April 10. On May 7, he was discharged from a Dubai hospital after clearing all tests.
The relative told Gulf News that he had registered the victim in the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NORKA) last month in order to repatriate him, however he was unsuccessful in procuring a ticket.
Riyadh, Jul 20: Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been admitted to a hospital in the capital, Riyadh, for medical tests due to inflammation of the gallbladder, the kingdom's Royal Court said Monday in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
The statement said the 84-year-old monarch is being tested at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital. The brief statement did not provide further details.
King Salman has been in power since January 2015. He is considered the last Saudi monarch of his generation of brothers who have held power since the death of their father and founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz.
King Salman has empowered his 34-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as his successor. The crown prince's assertive and bold style of leadership, as well as his consolidation of power and sidelining of potential rivals, has been controversial.
With the support of his father, Prince Mohammed has transformed the kingdom in recent years, opening it up to tourists and eroding decades of ultraconservative restrictions on entertainment and women's rights as he tries to diversify the Saudi economy away from reliance on oil exports.
The prince has also detained dozens of activists and critics, overseen a devastating war in Yemen, and rounded up top members of the royal family in his quest for power.
The Saudi king has not been seen in public in recent months due to social distancing guidelines and concerns over the spread of the coronavirus inside the kingdom, which has one of the largest outbreaks in the Middle East.
He has been shown, however, in state-run media images attending virtual meetings with his Cabinet and held calls with world leaders.
King Salman, who oversees Islam's holiest sites in Makkah and Medinah, was a crown prince under King Abdullah and served as defense minister. For more than 50 years prior to that, he was governor of Riyadh, overseeing its evolution from a barren city to a teeming capital.
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