- Title: EGYPT: Workmen repair, clear wreckage of deadly train crash
- Date: 26th October 2009
- Summary: AL-AYYAT, EGYPT (OCTOBER 25, 2009) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TRAIN WRECKAGE INSIDE OF WRECKED CARRIAGE OFFICIALS AND WORKMEN ON TRACKS NEAR WRECKAGE WRECKED TRAIN CARRIAGE SHOE ON TRAIN TRACKS MAN LEANING AGAINST REMAINS OF WRECKED TRAIN TRAIN WRECKAGE WITH WORKERS REPAIRING TRACKS NEAR IT WORKER REPAIRING TRAIN TRACK WRECKED TRAIN CARRIAGE VARIOUS OF WORKERS CLEARING WRECKAGE OFF OF TRACKS VARIOUS OF TRAIN PASSING BY ON TRACKS NEAR WRECKAGE VARIOUS OF TRAIN WRECKAGE WRECKAGE AND WORKERS AND OFFICIALS ON TRACKS
- Embargoed: 10th November 2009 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Egypt
- Country: Egypt
- Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
- Reuters ID: LVAOWMSJ7A2VMNIRUT4FM15ZVCK
- Story Text: The death toll from a train crash south of Cairo last night has reached 18, Egypt's Health Ministry said on Sunday (October 25), a day after two Egyptian passenger trains collided.
Last night rescue workers, local residents and relatives of the passengers struggled late into the night to retrieve the injured and the bodies of the dead from the compressed wreckage of the two trains.
By early Sunday morning workers had cleared much of the wreckage to the side of the train tracks in the village of al-Ayyat, where the accident took place.
Egypt's Health Ministry has also said that 39 people were injured in the accident and said that 12 of those had already been discharged from hospital.
According to officials and eyewitnesses, a first class train, filled with passengers, rammed into a mostly empty stationary train on the same track. Witnesses also said that the first train had stalled on the track after hitting a water buffalo earlier.
The moving train was headed south from Cairo toward Assiut and Aswan, a major tourist attraction that is home to Pharaonic ruins, security sources said.
An Egyptian railway authority official said a technical committee had been set up to investigate the cause of the crash.
A series of road and rail accidents in Egypt in recent years has triggered an outcry over the government's handling of transport safety.
Saturday's accident in al-Ayyat, which in 2002 was the scene of Egypt's worst rail disaster when fire ripped through seven carriages of an overcrowded passenger train, killing at least 360 people.
A train crash in northern Egypt killed 44 people in 2008, two years after a crash that killed 58 people. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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