Highway crash causes commuter chaos

THOUSANDS of motorists were yesterday caught up in a huge traffic jam on the Limassol-Nicosia highway.

According to chief of traffic police, Doros Achilleos, an articulated lorry collided with a garbage truck of Strovolos Municipality, with a saloon car also involved. The incident occurred at 6.40am, just after the Kotsiatis exit.

Four people were slightly injured. They were the lorry driver, 50-year-old George Kanni from Georgia, Omiros Pashas, the garbage truck driver, and 23-year-old Maria Michael, the driver of the car, as well as her 17-year-old sister, Flora, who was a passenger.

The accident completely cut off the traffic flow into Nicosia, with the police closing off traffic at the Kotsiatis exit, which was then redirected to the old Larnaca-Nicosia road at the Dhali industrial area.

A police spokeswoman said the long delays were due to the large size of the vehicles involved, “as a special removal lorry had to be called in to remove the vehicles from the road, which took one-and-a-half hours.”

Normal traffic flow resumed at around 10.30am.

The accident caused chaos for many drivers, one woman reporting that it took three hours and 45 minutes to reach Nicosia from Limassol. “The traffic jam started 20 minutes out of Limassol and we were completely stationary for 15-20 minutes at a time.”

Another motorist reported a two-hour journey for a distance of seven kilometres, with many suburbs of the capital suffering knock-on effects.

Police have apologised for the inconvenience caused to the drivers caught up in the delays.

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