Eleven dead, 98 injured after train derails in Egypt

A passenger train derailed north of Cairo, killing at least 11 people, Egyptian authorities have said, in the latest in a string of rail accidents to hit the country in recent years.

Four train wagons ran off the railway track by the city of Banha in Qalyubia province, just outside Cairo; the railway authority said in a statement on Sunday. Videos on social media showed wagons overturned and passengers escaping to safety along the railway.
The train was traveling to the Nile delta city of Mansoura from the Egyptian capital.

Most of the injuries were minor or moderate, with only a few critical cases, Khaled Megahed, a health ministry spokesman, told a local TV station.

The state-run Ahram daily newspaper reported that authorities have detained at least 10 railway officials; including the train driver and his assistant, pending an investigation.

Sunday’s accident came three weeks after two passenger trains collided in the province of Sohag; killing at least 18 people and injuring 200 others, including children. Prosecutors said they found that gross negligence by railway employees was behind the deadly 25 March crash, which caused public outcry across the country.

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 aging 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 traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.