Two killed, dozens injured in two Egypt railway accidents less than 24 hours apart

At least 40 people were injured in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Tuesday when a locomotive collided with a train, less than 24 hours after another accident involving a train killed two people and injured at least six in the suburb of Helwan south of Cairo.

In Alexandria, a locomotive collided with the back of a passenger train that was arriving in the city from the Egyptian capital.

The last car of the train was detached from the rest of the train, which continued on its journey.

Dozens were injured in the incident and were transported to three hospitals in the city, according to Egyptian media reports.

The Egyptian health ministry said that 40 people were injured while the governor of Alexandria, Mohammed Sharif, said that the injuries were light and that three people had been treated for broken bones, according to the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper.

The driver of the engine and two of his assistants were detained following the incident, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

On Monday, a freight train carrying coal collided with two vehicles – a taxi and a minibus carrying workers in the Cairo suburb of Helwan.

Two women were killed as a result and six other people were injured.

Egypt has a very poor rail safety record and the country has seen an alarming series of deadly train accidents recently.

On 5 June, 13 people were injured when a train collided with a locomotive near the Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt.

On 26 March, 19 people were killed and hundreds injured when two trains collided near the city of Sohag in Upper Egypt and this was followed three weeks later by the derailment of a train near Toukh north of Cairo which resulted in the deaths of 11 people and the injury of 98 others.

The accidents have been blamed on government negligence and a lack of investment. The Egyptian government sacked railway authority chief Ashraf Raslan and nine other senior railway employees after the Toukh accident but many Egyptians have held Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir, who remains in his position, responsible for the accidents.

Following the Toukh accident, al-Wazir tried to deflect blame by accusing the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement of deliberately engineering it, saying that members of the movement had infiltrated the railway sector.