Egypt: at least seven dead and more than a hundred injured in a collision between two trains

Two trains collided on Sunday south of the Egyptian capital, causing the derailment of several carriages and leaving at least seven dead and 112 injured, authorities said.

A train traveling from Giza to Fayoum collided with the rear of another train traveling south from Cairo to the city of Aswan, railway authorities said. All of these sites are important tourist destinations. According to the latest report from the Health Ministry, the accident killed seven passengers and 112 people are currently being treated for injuries in hospitals in the Giza region.

At the site of the collision, several wagons, some of which were reduced to carcasses, were overturned on their sides, AFP journalists noted. One end of the train is a pile of scrap metal, while the end of the other, torn apart by the impact, has toppled off the tracks into a neighboring farm. Emergency workers and bystanders were seen carrying a victim in a black body bag. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he was following the situation “with great concern” and had ordered the authorities to carry out an urgent investigation in order to “hold accountable all those whose negligence is proven”.

Several accidents in the region

Authorities said they had opened an investigation into the causes of the accident, which occurred in the Al-Ayyat area of Giza, already the scene of the worst train disaster in Egypt's history. In 2002, more than 370 people were killed in a fire that broke out aboard a train carrying vacationers south of Cairo. In 2009, several train collisions in this region caused dozens of victims.

Egypt's 110 million people rely heavily on rail transport, but the network, one of the largest in Africa, has suffered a number of fatal accidents. Over the past decade, Egypt has invested billions of dollars in modernizing its transport infrastructure, including new highways and high-speed rail lines. But it has yet to renovate much of its aging rail network.