TAHTA, Egypt (AP) – Two trains crashed in southern Egypt on Friday, killing at least 32 people and injuring 165, officials said, citing a series of fatal accidents on the country’s troubled railways.
Someone apparently activated the emergency brakes in the passenger train, and it was later overturned by another train, causing two cars to derail and flip beside them, Egyptian railway officials said, although Prime Minister Mustafa Medbouli He later added that no cause had been identified. . The passenger train was coming to the Mediterranean port of Alexandria, north of Cairo, railway officials said.
The video showed metal twisted iles throats with passengers trapped inside from dust trapped inside – some bleeding and others unconscious. The people at the door removed the corpses and laid them on the ground nearby.
On the video, one of the passengers was heard shouting, “Help us! People are dying! A female passenger looked down, sat up, looked squeezed under the seats, and was crying, “Boy, get me out!”
Hazem Seliman, who lives near the track and heard of the crash, said he initially thought the train had hit the car. When he arrived at the scene, he said he was found dead and injured on the ground, including women and children.
“We took the dead and put the injured in the ambulance,” he said.
More than 100 ambulances were dispatched to the scene in Sohag province, about 440 kilometers (270 miles) south of Cairo, Health Minister Hala Zayed said, and the injured were taken to four hospitals. Injuries include broken bones, cuts and bruises.
Total doctors: Two planes with doctors, most of them surgeons, were sent to Sohag, he added at a news conference in the province with Medboulini, adding that the military plane would bring people in need of special surgery to Cairo.
Chief Prosecutor Hamada al-Savi was at the scene to investigate the accident, he said.
“The (railway) service has been neglected to the extent that it has become obsolete and extremely dangerous,” Medbauli told reporters. “We have spent billions to upgrade the railways, but we still have a long way to go to complete all the necessary operations.”
Medbouli said each family member who was killed by a relative would be paid a 100,000, while Medbouli said the injured would receive between ૧ 1,880 and ૨ 5, depending on how many were injured.
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said he was monitoring the situation and that those responsible would receive “reprehensible punishment.”
He wrote on his Facebook page, “The pain that brings tears to our hearts today, but cannot make us more committed to ending such disasters.”
Egypt’s railway system has a history of poorly operated equipment and mismanagement, and official figures say there were 1,793 train accidents in 2017.
In 2018, a passenger train derailed near the southern city of Aswan, injuring at least six people and prompting authorities to fire the country’s railway chief. That same year, al-Sisi said the government needed about 250 billion Egyptian pounds (.1 14.1 billion) to re-establish the railway system. The comments came a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train, killing at least 12 people.
A year ago, two passenger trains collided just outside Alexandria, killing one. In 2001, at least one person was killed when two traveling trains collided near Cairo.
Egypt’s deadliest train crash occurred in 2002, when a train from Cairo to southern Egypt caught fire, killing more than 300 people.
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