RIYADH (Reuters) - Celebratory gunfire at a wedding party in eastern Saudi
Arabia on Tuesday night brought down an electric cable, killing 23 people, a
local civil defense official said.
"At the wedding, the cable fell on a metal door and the 23 people who died were
all electrocuted," Eastern Province official Abdullah Khashman said by phone.
A photograph of the aftermath of the accident, published on local newspapers'
websites showed a large courtyard strewn with fallen chairs and a pole in the
middle supporting cables carrying lightbulbs.
All those killed were from the same tribe, Khashman said. Thirty others were
injured in the incident near Abqaiq, a center of the Saudi energy industry.
Saudi Arabia banned the shooting of firearms at weddings, a popular tradition
in tribal areas of the conservative Islamic kingdom, last month.
Eastern Province governor Prince Mohammed bin Fahd ordered an investigation
into the incident, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland)