ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has expressed its deepest sympathies on the tragic train accident in Egypt which resulted in the death of at least 11 people on Sunday.
Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri in a statement expressed sympathies and wished quick recovery to the injured. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the government, the brotherly people of Egypt and the families of those who have lost their lives,” FO added.
On Sunday, Eleven people were killed and 98 injured in a train accident in Egypt’s Qalioubia province north of Cairo.
The train was heading from Cairo to the Nile Delta city of Mansoura when four carriages derailed at 1:54 PM, about 40 kms (25 miles) north of Cairo, Egyptian National Railways said in a short statement.
The cause of the accident is being investigated, it added. More than 50 ambulances took the injured to three hospitals in the province, the health ministry said. Videos on social media showed carriages overturned and passengers escaping to safety along the railway.
The derailing is the latest of several recent railways crashes in Egypt. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in March when two trains collided near Tahta, about 440 km (275 miles) south of Cairo.
Fifteen people were injured this month when two train carriages derailed near Minya al-Qamh city, about 70 km north of Cairo.
Egypt’s transportation minister Kamel El-Wazir, a former army general, has faced calls to resign from some Egyptians on social media. He has rejected these and vowed to keep working on developing the aging rail network.
In February 2019 an unmanned locomotive slammed into a barrier inside Cairo’s main Ramses railway station, causing a huge explosion and a fire that killed at least 25 people. That crash prompted the then-transportation minister to resign.
Egypt’s deadliest train crash was in 2002 when more than 370 people were killed after a fire broke out in an overnight train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.
