At least 11 dead, 98 injured in Egypt train crash
(Updates casualty count, adds info)
Cairo, April 18 (EFE).- At least 11 people died and another 98 were injured in a railway accident in northern Egypt on Sunday, where in recent weeks several such incidents have occurred, including a train crash that killed about 20 people, the Egyptian Health Ministry reported.
The accident occurred in the town of Toukh, in Qalyubiyya province in the Nile Delta, when four cars of a train running between Cairo and the city of Mansura derailed.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi ordered an investigation to learn the causes of the accident, according to the state-run MENA news agency.
Thus far, six railway workers have been arrested, including the two train drivers involved.
In late March, two trains collided in the southern province of Sohag, leaving at least 19 dead and 180 injured, although initially authorities said that more than 30 people had perished.
After March’s accident, Al-Sisi promised “dissuasive punishment” to be applied to those responsible, either for “negligence or corruption, without exception or delay.”
Human error and the poor state of the Egyptian railway network are behind most of the accidents.
Despite repeated promises by the authorities to improve the country’s obsolete infrastructure and invest more in the rail sector, accidents have continued to occur over the past few decades without modernization of the extensive railway network running generally north-south through Egypt.
The Middle Eastern country’s deadliest train crash occurred in 2002, when more than 300 people died in a fire that erupted on board an overnight train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.
EFE
