At least 32 people were killed and 66 injured in the crash on Friday between two trains some 365 kilometers south of Cairo, the Health Ministry reported.

Health authorities sent 36 ambulances to the scene, in the town of Tahta, and the victims are being transferred to local hospitals, the ministry said in a statement.

Images released by the local press showed wagons derailed on a water canal.

“The trains collided when they were going at not very high speeds, causing the destruction of two wagons and the overturning of a third,” a security source told Reuters.

For his part, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mustafa Madbuli, assured in a statement that there is coordination with the competent Ministries and asked the heads of each Department to “go immediately to the scene of the accident to offer the necessary support and deal with the situation quickly”.

In Egypt, rail accidents are frequent, due to the poor state of the network and despite the fact that the authorities have repeatedly promised to renew the infrastructures and invest more in the safety of the tracks and their correct signaling.

The last major accident occurred on Feb 27, 2019, in which 22 people died and at least 40 were injured at the capital’s central station, where a driverless locomotive gained speed and ended up crashing into a concrete barrier located next to it.

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