CAIRO: A train smashed into the back of another killing 32 people and injuring at least 66 more after “unknown individuals” triggered the emergency brakes in one of the trains causing it to stop near the Egyptian city of Sohag, Egypt’s railway authority said on Friday.
Khaled Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, explained that immediately after the accident, 36 ambulances were dispatched to transport some 50 injured people to hospitals.
The Public Prosecutor ordered an urgent investigation into the collision, and a team from the Public Prosecution Office will conduct the probe into what caused the accident.
Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly ordered officials to go immediately to the scene, to provide the necessary support and swiftly deal with the situation on the ground.
Madbouly decided to activate the crisis room at the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center in order and to coordinate between the ministries and the concerned authorities, a security source said.
Police detained both train drivers according to Sky News Arabia.
Egypt’s rail authority said that unidentified passengers had “activated emergency brakes in several carriages” causing the collision.
At least two carriages overturned between the stations of Maragha and Tahta, it said in a statement.
One train was travelling between the southern city of Luxor and Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast while the other was travelling between Cairo and the southern city of Aswan.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Friday vowed “deterrent punishment” for anyone found responsible for the collision of the two passenger trains.
“Anyone who caused this painful accident through negligence or corruption, or anything similar, must receive a deterrent punishment without exception or delay,” El-Sisi said in a tweet.
#BREAKING | 32 people killed, 84 injured in Upper Egypt’s Sohag train collision- Health Ministry#EgyptToday #BreakingNews #Egypt #Sohag #Africa | # pic.twitter.com/FDT2vSBPL3
— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) March 26, 2021
The injured have been transferred to Maragha Hospital, Tahta Hospital and Sohag Hospital, local media reported.
Egypt’s Minister of Transportation will be visiting the scene.
#BREAKING: 50 people injured in collision of two trains in Upper Egypt: official from the Health Ministry to local media#EgyptToday #BreakingNews | # pic.twitter.com/pf6TJAuxj5
— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) March 26, 2021
Images captured by local media showed buckled train carriages derailed above a river.
#Egypt : Crash involving passenger trains in Sohag governorate – unclear how many casualties # pic.twitter.com/7NUzVGVCJe
— sebastian usher (@sebusher) March 26, 2021
In March last year, at least 13 people were injured when two passenger trains collided in Cairo, triggering a brief suspension of rail services nationwide.
At the time rail managers blamed the crash on signals not functioning in bad weather.
And in February 2019, a train derailed and caught fire at Cairo’s main railway station, killing at least 22 people and injuring 41, and prompting the transport minister, Hisham Arafat, to resign.
(With AFP)
Egyptian rail on track as first Russian trains arriveOff the rails: Egypt’s deadly record of train accidents