Passenger train derails near Egypt’s Giza, scores injured

CAIRO – A passenger train derailed Friday on a railway track south of Cairo, wounding at least 55 people, Egyptian officials said.

The accident took place when three of the train’s carriages derailed at a station close to Giza, Egypt’s railway authority said. It added that lifting tools, cranes and maintenance teams were dispatched to the site.

It was not immediately clear what caused the derailment.

Ahmed al-Ansari, the ambulance authority head, said as many as 55 people were wounded and taken to hospital for treatment. There were no immediate reports of fatalities.

Egypt’s railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Figures by Egypt’s official statistics agency show that 1,793 train accidents took place in 2017.

In March, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the government lacks about 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $14.1 billion, to overhaul the country’s run-down railway system.

His remarks came a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train in Egypt, killing at least 12 people, including a child.

Last August, two passenger trains collided just outside Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people, the country’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.

In 2006, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.