CAIRO — A rear-end collision between two passenger trains in Egypt's Giza Governorate on Sunday left at least seven people dead and 112 others injured, local authorities reported.

The crash occurred when a Tahya Misr service traveling from Giza to Faiyum struck the rear of an Aswan-bound train between the Kafr Ammar and Al-Raq stations. The impact caused multiple carriages to derail, triggering a swift emergency response.

Egypt’s Ministry of Health deployed over 50 ambulances to the scene near the Cairo-Aswan agricultural highway. Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar placed medical facilities across the Giza and Beni Suef regions on high alert, directing all available health resources toward treating the victims.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased and wished injured passengers a quick recovery. In a public statement, the president ordered an immediate and thorough investigation into the crash, warning that anyone found guilty of negligence will face strict legal consequences. Railway crews and heavy cranes were subsequently deployed to clear the wreckage and restore the tracks.

Sunday's tragedy revives concerns over safety in the region, as Giza’s Al-Aiyat district has a grim history of major rail accidents. The area witnessed Egypt’s deadliest rail disaster in 2002, when a holiday train fire killed more than 370 people, as well as a fatal derailment in 2016 and a freight train collision in September of this year. Additional derailments were also recorded in Aswan and Kafr El-Zayat earlier this year.

While the Egyptian government has invested heavily over the past decade in modern highways and new high-speed railway initiatives, critics note that critical modernization and comprehensive overhauls of the country's aging conventional rail networks remain overdue.

[ⓒ Global Economic Times. 무단전재-재배포 금지]