Egypt train crash leaves close to 100 injured

Close to 100 people were injured when a train crashed into concrete south of Cairo in the early hours of Thursday morning, local media reports.

Several ambulances were headed to the scene of accident, however the injuries were minimal as the local media reported.

Those involved claim the train was moving at a high speed.

“He was driving at an unexpectedly high speed. He was about to arrive in a storage area where he should decrease his speed. He was not driving on a main railroad, it was a storage rail which means he will park soon. We saw the train driving fast and collide with this rock. He even turned the rock around and now the train is lying on the rock,” said local man Mahmoud Islam.

The train was headed from Aswan to Cairo when it collided with a block of concrete which derailed it and lifted the front carriage several metres in the air.

“In less than a minute the train crashed. We ran outside and found it in the storage area. This is evidence that he was driving at high speed. He was set to arrive at the platform at 1:30 am. He should park here. That means if he would have not crashed here he would not have time to park at the platform,” said Salah Mahmoud, who was near the scene at the time of the crash.

In 2012, over 50 people mainly children were killed when a train slammed into a bus carrying school children at a rail crossing. Later in 2015, a similar incident happened between a bus and train leaving seven people dead

Egypt’s roads and railways have a poor safety record and Egyptians have long complained that governments have failed to enforce basic safeguards.