Saudi newspapers on Thursday reported attacks by Ethiopian housemaids on their employers while one of them committed suicide and another ran amok on the road.
Newspapers quoted police as saying a Saudi woman in her 50s was lying on her bed in her room in the Western town of Makkah when her Ethiopian maid stormed in and lunged at her with a knife and a cleaver.
She stabbed her in the face, the neck and the chest but the woman managed to flee the room and screamed for help from neighbors.
“The neighbours broke the apartment’s door and overpowered the maid…but she managed to flee while the woman was rushed to hospital,” Sabq daily said.
It was the latest in a wave of deadly attacks by Ethiopian housemaids on their employers and children, prompting the oil-rich Gulf Kingdom to suspend the hiring of domestic servants from that east African nation.
In the northern Saudi town of Owaikliya, police found an Ethiopian housemaid hanging on the roof top of her employer’s house and forensic tests showed she had committed a suicide by using the washing line to hang herself.
In the capital Riyadh, newspapers said an Ethiopian maid at a government social and child care centre ran amok and started throwing rocks on cars parked outside.
“She then started to yell at people before trying to commit a suicide…but workers at the centre succeeded in overpowering her and preventing her from committing a suicide,” Sabq daily said, adding that the maid was taken to hospital.(E247)
