At least 32 people killed after two trains collide in Egypt

Mar 26, 2021

At least 32 people have been killed after two trains collided near the Egyptian city of Sohag, around 300 miles south of Cairo.

The country’s railway authority said emergency brakes in the first train were triggered by “unknown individuals”, causing the train to stop.

The second train then crashed into the first from behind, causing two carriages to come off the tracks.

Dozens of ambulances were sent to the scene and local media photos showed flipped carriages with passengers trapped inside.

Egypt’s health ministry said 66 people were injured.

The public prosecutor’s office said it had ordered an investigation into the collision.

Egypt’s railways have a history of bad maintenance and poor management and three years ago, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the equivalent of around £10.2bn was needed to overhaul the run-down network.

There were 1,793 accidents in the country during 2017, according to the latest official figures available.

The deadliest crash was in 2002, when more than 300 people died after a fire in a train travelling from Cairo to Egypt’s south.

In 2018, the chief of the country’s railways was fired after a train derailed near the southern city of Aswan, injuring six people.

The same year, a passenger train and a freight train collided, killing at least 12 people.

In 2017, two passenger trains collided just outside the port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people.

And a year earlier, two commuter trains collided near Cairo, killing at least 51 people.

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