Deadly train crash kills Egyptian soldiers

A military train carrying young recruits to an army camp derailed in a Cairo suburb on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 103 others, Egypt’s health ministry spokesman said.

The train was traveling from southern Egypt to Cairo when it derailed in the Giza neighborhood of Badrashin, a security source told the Reuters news agency.

The governor of Giza, Ali Abdelrahman, said that injured passengers were being taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals.

“The Egyptian ambulance authority has sent 66 ambulance cars to the site of the accident to move the bodies of the injured and the corpses of the victims to hospitals,” Ahmed Omar, the health ministry spokesman, told the official MENA news agency.

The train was a military vehicle carrying conscripted youth on their way to an army camp.

Egypt’s railways have a poor safety record, and Egyptians have long complained that successive governments have failed to enforce even basic safeguards, leading to a string of deadly crashes.

In November, at least 50 people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed the tracks at a railroad crossing south of Cairo, further inflaming public anger at Egypt’s transport network.

Egypt’s deadliest railway tragedy happened in 2002, when more than 360 people were killed by a train fire.