CAIRO – Two trains collided in southern Egypt on Friday, killing at least 32 people and injuring 90 in the latest disaster that hit a rail system that has long been affected by accidents, poor maintenance and poor management.
The National Railway Authority of Egypt said “unknown actors” had put the brakes on one of the trains involved near the town of Sohag, on the Nile, and another train from behind hit it, causing two passenger cars to overturn. A video shot by a passenger and posted online showed a frantic scene inside one of the cars, where people seemed to be trapped.
“Save us”, one of the passengers is heard screaming. “We can’t get people out of there.”
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi promised in a post on his official Twitter page to penalize those responsible.
“The pain that breaks our hearts will only increase our determination to end these disasters,” he said.
The collision occurred when Egypt was dealing with a separate crisis in the Suez Canal, where a freighter that ran aground stopped traffic for days on one of the world’s major sea routes.
Egypt’s railways have a terrible safety record, with fatal accidents, fires and collisions at signal crossings being a frequent occurrence. In 2002, the country’s worst rail disaster claimed more than 300 lives when a fire broke out on a high-speed train traveling from southern Egypt to Cairo.
At least 20 people died and dozens were injured in 2019 when a train hit a platform at Cairo’s main railway station, causing a fire. A year earlier, a passenger train and freight train collided in the Nile Delta, north of Cairo, killing at least 12 people.
In 2017, two trains crashed near the port city of Alexandria, killing at least 37 people and injuring more than 100.
The government statistics agency reported 10,965 rail accidents between 2008 and 2017. The 1,793 rail accidents recorded in 2017 were the highest number of accidents the country had seen in at least 15 years.
Although investigations and inquiries are often requested after failures, little has been done to resolve longstanding problems. After an accident in 2018, Sisi said the government lacked the nearly $ 14 billion needed to reform the run-down rail system.
Anna Schaverien contributed reporting from London.