Egypt: 11 dead, 98 injured after train derails near Cairo

Eleven people were killed and 98 injured in a train accident in Egypt’s Qalyubia province north of Cairo, the health ministry said in a statement.

The train was heading from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura when four carriages derailed at 1:54pm (11:54 GMT), about 40km (25 miles) north of Cairo, Egyptian National Railways said in a short statement.

The cause of the accident is being investigated, it added.

More than 50 ambulances rushed to the site and moved the injured to three hospitals in the province, the health ministry said.

Videos on social media purportedly showed carriages overturned and passengers escaping to safety along the railway.

Egypt has seen several railway tragedies in recent years.

At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in March when two trains collided near Tahta, about 440km (275 miles) south of Cairo.

Earlier this week, 15 people were injured after another train derailed in the northern province of Minya al-Qamh.

Egypt’s transportation minister Kamel al-Wazir, a former army general, has faced calls to resign from some Egyptians on social media. He has rejected these and said he would keep working on developing the ageing rail network.

In February 2019 an unmanned locomotive slammed into a barrier inside Cairo’s main Ramses railway station, causing a huge explosion and a fire that killed at least 25 people. That crash prompted the then-transportation minister to resign.

Egypt’s deadliest train crash was in 2002, when more than 370 people were killed after a fire broke out in an overnight train travelling from Cairo to southern Egypt.