Kuwaiti woman 'investigated over Ethiopian maid's window fall' Published duration 31 March 2017

media caption The maid was filmed falling from the window - she survived with minor injuries

The Kuwaiti authorities are reportedly investigating a video that appears to show a woman filming her Ethiopian maid falling from a seventh-floor window without attempting to help her.

The maid can be heard screaming "hold me, hold me" just before her hand slips and she falls onto a roof below.

She was subsequently rescued by paramedics and treated in hospital for a broken arm and other injuries.

The Kuwait Society for Human Rights said the employer had a duty of rescue.

The organisation noted that emirate's penal code decreed that anyone who deliberately refrained from coming to the aid of a person in peril was liable to be sentenced to up to three months in prison.

The Kuwait Times meanwhile cited a lawyer, Fawzia al-Sabah, as saying she would file a complaint against the employer with the public prosecutor.

The newspaper said it was believed the maid initially climbed out of the window because she was suicidal.

In the 12-second video posted online, she is seen hanging outside a block of flats in the Sabah al-Salem district of Kuwait City, with one hand gripping the window.

The woman holding the camera is then heard telling her: "Oh crazy, come back."

The maid pleads with the woman to help her shortly before she loses her grip and she falls onto the metal roof of an adjoining one-storey building.

Another video posted online by the Alanba newspaper on Thursday appears to show the maid being helped to climb down a ladder by paramedics and a fireman.

Alanba cited the employer as saying that she had filmed the incident and shared it because she did not want to be accused of the maid's murder if she had died.