32 people are killed and more than 60 injured after two trains collide in Egypt

Two passengers trains have crashed in India, leaving dozens dead and wounded as carriages derailed and overturned.

At least 32 passengers have died in the collision which took place in the province of Sohag, 285 miles south of the capital Cairo, on Friday afternoon.

Another 66 people have been reported injured, while images from the scene showed multiple carriages had been thrown off the tracks and were either strewn on their sides or else crumpled from the force of the impact.  

The crash sent three carriages off the rails and a state of emergency has been declared in hospitals in the region

Two trains collided in southern Egypt resulting in 32 deaths and 66 injuries

Some victims seemed unconscious, while others could be see bleeding. Bystanders carried bodies, laying them out on the ground near the site of the accident.    

The accident took place between the area of Dafan Al-Sawam and the city of Tahta.

The local Sohag ambulance authority has sent 49 ambulances to the scene.

Hospitals in the region have declared a ‘state of emergency’ in preparation to receive casualties.   

A source told local news website Cairo 24: ‘The number of injuries has exceeded dozens so far, and they have been transferred to Maragha Hospital, Tahta Hospital and Sohag Hospital’.   

Egypt has been plagued with deadly train accidents in recent years that have been widely blamed on inadequate infrastructure and poor maintenance.

Egypt’s railway system has a history of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Official figures show that 1,793 train accidents took place in 2017 across the country. 

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.

In the same year, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the government lacked about 250 billion Egyptian pounds (£11 billion) to overhaul the run-down railway system. He spoke a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train, killing at least 12 people, including a child.

Passengers were trapped in the wreckage after the two trains collided

The collision happened in the southern Egyptian province of Sohang. Hospitals have declared a state of emergency and 49 ambulances have been rushed to the scene

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 was in 2002 when more than 300 people were killed as fire erupted in a train travelling from Cairo to southern Egypt.

Friday’s crash comes as Egypt faces another major transport challenge, with a giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal and causing huge traffic jams at either end of the strategic shipping lane.

The MV Ever Given, which is longer than four football fields, has been wedged diagonally across the entire canal since Tuesday, shutting the waterway in both directions.

Tugboats and dredgers were working Friday to free the vessel as companies were forced to re-route services from the vital shipping lane around the southern tip of Africa.