Egyptian justice announced on Monday the arrest of eight people in the investigation into the train accident which left at least 18 dead and 200 injured on Friday in the village of al-Samaa Gharb 460 km south of Cairo.
"The Attorney General ordered that the two drivers of train 157 (involved in the collision), their two assistants, the traffic control officer at Al-Maragha station in Upper Egypt and three other officers, be arrested ", Said the general prosecutor's office in a press release.
At first, the authorities had reported 32 dead and 165 injured, before revising this toll down Saturday, to 19 dead and 185 injured.
Now, the prosecution evokes 18 dead and 200 injured.
Simulations to test signaling and brakes
The eight people, who were arrested shortly after the tragedy, are in preventive detention for four days, according to judicial sources.
The drivers and other employees were subjected to blood tests to "reveal if they had consumed drugs", according to the same source.
The investigators also questioned three police officers "in charge of the safety of the trains", several employees of the station and the controllers.
They made several simulations to test the signaling, the manual brakes, which "revealed that the driver of the locomotive could see the luminous signage of the control tower".
Images taken by a surveillance camera show an extremely violent collision in which a wagon is thrown into the air, in a huge cloud of dust.
Egypt is regularly bereaved by serious road and rail accidents, due to anarchic traffic, dilapidated vehicles or poorly maintained and poorly supervised roads and railways.
The deadliest rail tragedy in the country's history occurred in 2002, with a train fire that killed more than 360 people some 40 kilometers south of Cairo.
