PARAMARIBO, Suriname--A woman was injured on Sunday morning, when an armoured vehicle of the National Army NL ran off the road and crashed into a couple of buildings in Paramaribo. The vehicle, a Brazilian made “Urutu,” was coming off the steep Jules Wijdenbosch Bridge, when its driver lost control.
A family that happened to be filming the road, caught the entire incident on tape. The footage shows two Urutus, escorted by a motorized Military Police Officer, coming off the bridge from District Commewijne.
It is quickly obvious that the second vehicle is coming off too fast and that it will not be able to make the turn at the roundabout. It does indeed careen off the road, into a transformer house of electricity company EBS and then ploughed into a Chinese restaurant, where it came to a standstill. A Chinese woman inside was slightly injured during the accident. The soldiers inside the vehicle were not hurt.
Reports are that the crash was caused by a faulty brake system of the car. The Urutus date back to the 1980’s and played an intense role in the internal war that raged in the hinterland between the army and the Jungle Commando.
In 2015 they were shipped to Brazil, where they were fully refurbished by the manufacturer.
