Four people lost their lives whilst several others sustained various degrees of injuries when a passenger train slammed into the buffers at a station north of Cairo, the Egyptian health ministry said in an update Wednesday.
Tuesday’s crash in the city of Qalyub was the latest in a spate of deadly accidents on Egypt’s rail network that have mostly been blamed on ageing infrastructure and poor maintenance.
The National Railways Authority said the driver had overshot the station and run into the buffers at the end of the track after passing through a stop signal.
“That led to the derailment of the locomotive and the first carriage,” the authority said in a statement.
Pictures from the scene showed emergency crews using a crane to lift the derailed coach that appeared to be partially crumpled.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to hold to account those responsible for recurrent deadly accidents on Egypt’s railways.
Contracts have been awarded for the construction of the first part of a new high-speed rail network to replace existing lines in one of the marquee projects of Sisi’s administration.
