A hurtling locomotive crashed, derailed and caught fire at Cairo’s main train station on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people in the latest disaster to strike Egypt’s rundown railways.The train engine appeared to have slammed into the buffers at the end of the track at high speed, sparking a major blaze that blackened the walls of the Ramses station.
It said the driver had left his cabin without turning the engine off, so that the train careered onwards at full speed before smashing to a violent stop. “I carried around 20 charred bodies to ambulances,” said Atef Ahmed Mahmoud from the Nile Delta city of Zagazig. Officials often blame the rail network’s poor maintenance on decades of negligence and a lack of funds.
In August 2017 two passenger trains collided near Alexandria, killing more than 40 people and injuring scores.