Two trains are seen after they collided just outside Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, killing at least dozens of people and injuring over 100 in the country’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade. (AP Photo)
Alexandria, Egypt: At least 36 people were killed as two trains collided Friday outside the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in one of the deadliest in a string of such accidents in Egypt, the health ministry said.
The crash also injured 123 people, the ministry said in a statement.
Footage on the state broadcaster showed one train had partly keeled over in the crash, and medics were seen moving the dead and injured to ambulances.
Transport ministry officials, quoted on state television, said the crash was probably caused by a malfunction in one train that brought it to a halt on the rails. The other train then crashed into it.
One of them had been heading from Cairo to the northern city of Alexandria and the other from the canal city of Port Said, east of the capital, to Alexandria.
The dead and injured were initially placed on blankets by the sides of the tracks running through farmland on the outskirts of Alexandria.
Assistant health minister Sharif Wadi told state television that most of the injured had been taken to hospital.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi sent his condolences to the victims' families and ordered a probe to "hold accountable" those responsible for the disaster, his office said.