Twenty-three people were killed and more than 130 injured on Sunday in the derailment of a train north of Cairo, the prosecution said on Tuesday in a new report.
The attorney general
"ordered the arrest of 23 people accused of involvement in the accident"
, citing among others
"negligence"
and
"failure to comply with laws and regulations"
, according to an official statement.
Read also: Egypt: 11 dead, nearly 100 injured in a train accident
This accident caused the death of 23 people and injured 139, added the same source. A previous report reported 11 dead and 98 injured. The accident came three weeks after another deadly train collision in Egypt. According to the authorities, wagons of the train going from Cairo to Mansoura, 130 km further north, derailed Sunday at the agricultural city of Toukh. The causes of the accident have not been specified and the investigation is continuing. On Tuesday, Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir sacked the head of the National Railways Authority Achraf Raslan after multiple deadly train accidents.
"It is not only a question of changing direction (...) but also of taking the next step which requires (...) a complete improvement of the railway network",
indicated the Minister in a statement. communicated. On social networks, the minister himself has been the subject of calls to resign. Egypt, a country of 100 million inhabitants, has been the scene of several deadly collisions and derailments which have rekindled the anger of the Egyptians, faced with the negligence of the authorities and the archaism of the national rail network. Frequent, these disasters are generally attributed to infrastructure and maintenance problems. At the end of March, at least 20 people died and nearly 200 were injured in the collision of two trains near the city of Sohag (south).
The general prosecutor's office said the driver of one of the trains and his assistant were not at their post during the accident, which the two men contested. Earlier in April, 15 people were also injured after the derailment of two cars some 70 km north of Cairo. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has promised sanctions against those responsible for the railway tragedies. At the beginning of April, the African Development Bank (AfDB) announced the granting of a loan of 145 million euros to Egypt for the improvement of its railway infrastructure. The deadliest railway tragedy in the country's history occurred in 2002, with a train fire that killed more than 370 people some 40 kilometers south of Cairo.
