CAIRO: Forty-nine people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed tracks in a city south of Cairo on Saturday, state media and officials said.
All but two of the dead were children, aged around four to eight, said a senior security official in Assiut, near the site. One woman and a man, probably the bus driver, also died, he added.
The bus was broken in half by the force of the crash, pictures on youm7.com website, run by an Egyptian newspaper, showed. Blood was spattered on the front of the engine and school bags and text books, some bloodstained, were scattered.
Transport Minister Mohamed Rashad submitted his resignation after the accident, an offer which President Mohamed Mursi was considering, media reported.
Egypt’s roads and railways have a poor safety record and Egyptians have long complained successive governments have failed to enforce even basic safeguards, leading to a string of deadly crashes.
State television said that as well as 49 dead, 18 people were injured. A medical source said as many as 28 were injured, 27 of them children.
“They told us the barriers were open when the bus crossed the tracks and the train collided with it,” said Mohamed Samir, a doctor at Assiut hospital where the injured were taken, citing witness accounts.
Assiut Governor Yahya Keshk also said the railway crossing was open when the train hit the bus. “The crossing worker was asleep. He has been detained,” he told state television.
The doctor said the bodies of many of those killed were severely mutilated, indicating the force of the crash, which took place in the city of Manfalut, near Assiut, about 300 km (190 miles) south of the capital.
“I saw the train collide with the bus and push it about 1 km (half a mile) along the track,” said Ahmed Youssef, a driver.
Officials said the level of destruction and mutilation made it difficult to count and identify the bodies.
President Mursi ordered his ministers to offer support to the families of those killed, the official news agency said. Prime Minister Hisham Kandil ordered investigations into anyone responsible for the crash.
Victims’ families protested at the scene, the state news agency reported. Officials sought to reassure them the case would be investigated and they would receive help, it said.
Earlier this month, at least three Egyptians were killed and more than 30 injured in a train crash in Fayoum, south of Cairo. In July, 15 people were injured in Giza, close to the capital, when a train derailed.
Egypt’s worst train disaster was in 2002 when a fire ripped through seven carriages of an overcrowded passenger train, killing at least 360 people.
Many more have been killed in rail accidents since then despite pledges from successive government to improve safety. Accidents involving multiple deaths are also common on Egypt’s poor road network. (Reuters)