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A video received by the AFP news agency shows that several wagons collided in a railway accident at a site in southern Sohago, some 460 kilometers south of Cairo.
At least 32 dead and dozens injured when two trains collided in #Egypt pic.twitter.com/9jqMwgFsvB
– Utkarsh Singh (@ utkarshs88) March 26, 2021
Another 108 people were injured in the disaster north of Sohag, according to the Health Ministry.
The health services sent dozens of ambulances to the scene of the accident and the victims were taken to the nearest hospitals.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, for his part, has promised “deterrent punishment” to those responsible for the disaster.
“Anyone who caused this painful accident due to negligence, corruption or anything of the sort must face dissuasive punishment without exception or delay,” AF al Sisi said on Twitter.
Springs and deformed metal protruded from the rubble as dozens of people gathered around the overturned wagons, an AFP correspondent reported.
The grim images posted on Facebook on the social network show people in one of the wagons asking for help to dispose of the rubble.
“It just came to our attention then. Where are the toilets? Help us,” shouts a young man many times.
One of the photos shows another man covered in dust, pressed into a deformed metal spot where there may be a gap between the car seats.
In another frame of the video, a man is heard urging a middle-aged woman trapped between the seats to move forward. She goes out of her way to do it: “Please, my son, help me.”
The Egyptian railway service reported that the accident occurred after unidentified passengers on one of the trains “applied the emergency brakes on several carriages.”
The report says that one train collided with the last car of another, causing at least two cars to overturn between the Maraga and Tahta stations.
One train ran from the southern city of Luxor to Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, the other from Cairo to the southern city of Aswan.
Health Minister Hala Zayed left for Sohag to visit the injured and authorities launched an investigation into the disaster.
In recent years, rail accidents have been frequent in Egypt due to non-compliant infrastructure and poor maintenance of the rail network.
One of the most fatal disasters occurred in 2002 when a fire broke out on a crowded train south of Cairo, claiming 373 lives.
At least 13 people were killed in a collision between two passenger trains in Cairo in March last year. The disaster caused the temporary disruption of train traffic across the country.
At the time, rail administrators blamed the rail traffic regulation signs for not operating in bad weather.
In February 2019, more than 20 people were killed when a derailed train caught fire at Cairo’s main train station. The Minister of Transport resigned as a result of this fact.
Friday’s disaster occurred as Egypt was trying to solve another transportation problem. A container ship trapped in the Suez Canal blocked traffic on one of the world’s most important maritime arteries. This caused congestion on both sides of the canal.
The MV Ever Given, a container ship with more than four football fields, has been stuck in the canal since Tuesday.
Egyptian authorities said efforts to clear the stranded ship continued on Friday, but rescue experts warn that the ship could remain stranded for some time. As a result of this incident, some shipping companies are diverting ships through the Cape of Good Hope sailing around the African continent.
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