At least 11 killed, 98 injured after train derails in Egypt
text_fields
Cairo: At least 11 people were killed and 98 others were wounded in a train derailment on Sunday in the Delta city of Toukh, north of the Egyptian capital Cairo, the Egyptian Health Ministry said, according to an IANS report.
A total of 60 ambulances have been sent to the scene and the wounded have been transferred to three public hospitals, the ministry said in a statement, Xinhua news agency reported.
The accident happened after four carriages of the train, coming from Cairo to the Delta city of Mansoura, derailed, the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation said.
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has ordered the formation of a committee to present a report about the reasons for the accident.
An investigation into the accident is underway with the train driver and his assistant, as well as eight other officials at the Toukh train station, the office of the Public Prosecutor said.
Egypt has a long history of train accidents due to degrading infrastructure and poor management. At least 20 people died and 199 others were injured on March 26 in a deadly train crash in the country's southern province of Sohag.
Egypt's Public Prosecution said in a report released on April 12 that human errors and gross negligence by railway staff were behind the two-train collision in Sohag.
The worst train accident in Egypt took place in February 2002 in El-Ayyat, 70 km south of Cairo, when a train travelling from Cairo to Luxor caught fire that killed 383 people.