A 22-year-old French woman suffered serious head injuries yesterday when she was struck by a piece of metal scaffolding that fell from a Gżira construction site.

The woman, who lives in St Paul’s Bay, was walking along Sir Patrick Stuart Street with her partner at about 11.35 a.m., the police said.

A man who witnessed the accident said a two-metre long pipe fell from the third storey of a block of apartments under construction and hit her on the back of the head.

She fell to the ground and lost consciousness, bleeding from the head, as passers-by stopped to help her. After a few minutes she started showing signs of awareness.

The witness claimed that a car then stopped nearby and a man emerged. He took some sheets out of the boot of the car and placed them near the injured woman.

The witness claimed that the man then picked up the pipe from the ground and threw it over a low wall, into the site.

Some time later, the witness said, he saw a construction worker inside the site pick up the pipe and take it upstairs. The witness informed the police about what he had seen.

An ambulance took the woman to Mater Dei Hospital where it was established she had serious head injuries but was not in a critical condition. The police are investigating.

The case brings to mind a fatal accident that took place last February when the steel wire of a tower crane snapped and the metal hook fell on 59-year-old Zaren Baldacchino. He had gone on the Sliema construction site in Sir Arthur Mercieca Street to visit his son who worked there.

In November 2010, a 33-year-old woman was on her way to have a coffee with a friend in Bisazza Street, Sliema, when 40 bags of powdered gypsum fell off a tower crane, missing her by a few metres.