Firefighters were seen hosing down the charred wreckage of the locomotive as security forces guarded the site. People at the site of the crash appeared to be frustrated at the government’s failure to revamp the railway network. Still, figures by the official statistics agency show there were 1,793 train accidents in 2017, up from 1,249 in 2016. The next year a train crash in the northern province of Beheira killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more. Months later Egypt’s transportation minister sacked the head of the railway authority after train derailments including one that injured some 60 people in Giza.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 27, 2019 14:48 UTC