Two passenger trains have ploughed into each other in Egypt’s Nile Delta, killing at least three people including two children.
The horror crash happened on Saturday in the city of Zagazig, the capital of Sharqiya province, the country’s railway authority said in a statement.
Egypt’s Health Ministry said the collision injured at least 40 others who have been rushed to nearby Al-Ahrar and Zagazig University hospitals.
The ministry added: ‘Rescue operations are ongoing.’
Shocking pictures show worried onlookers surrounding the crushed carriages. People can be seen inside the wreck as police officers stand near the scene.
Video from the site of the crash showed a train car crumpled by the impact, surrounded by crowds. Men tried to lift the injured through the windows of a passenger car.
Train derailments and crashes are common in Egypt, where an aging railway system has also been plagued by mismanagement.
In recent years, the government announced initiatives to improve its railways.
In 2018, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said some 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $8.13 billion, would be needed to properly overhaul the North African country’s neglected rail network. El-Sissi spoke a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train, killing at least 12 people, including a child.
Last month, a train crashed into a truck crossing the tracks in the Mediterranean province of Alexandria, killing two people.
In 2021, two passenger trains collided in southern Egypt, leaving 32 dead and around 100 wounded as multiple carriages derailed and flipped over.
The crash happened in Sohag province, 285 miles south of Cario, when ‘unknown individuals’ pulled the emergency brake on one train headed from Luxor to Alexandria, causing it to stop on the tracks.
A second train going from Aswan to Cairo then ploughed into it from behind, causing at least two carriages to derail while others were left buckled and broken by the force of the impact.
In 2018, a passenger train derailed near the southern city of Aswan, injuring at least six people and prompting authorities to fire the chief of the country’s railways.
A year earlier, two passenger trains collided just outside the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people. In 2016, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.
Egypt’s deadliest train crash took place in 2002, when over 300 people were killed when fire erupted in speeding train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.