One person killed, 21 injured in yet another train collision in Minya

One person was killed and 21 were injured in a train collision in Minya on Sunday that led two train carriages to fall in the Ibrahimiya Canal.

The collision, one of many in Egypt’s crash-ridden railway system, occurred hours after the inauguration of a new train station in Upper Egypt, during which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir praised the “LE2 trillion” worth of developments to the sector done in Wazir’s tenure.

The incident occurred when a train locomotive collided with sleeper train no. 1087 near a railway crossing in Minya, causing two train carriages to fall into the canal.

The Health Ministry announced one death in a statement on Sunday morning, noting that rescue teams were still operating at the scene, while the Minya Health Directorate said that the person found dead was a 21-year-old military conscript, according to Al-Masry al-Youm. Sky News Arabia reported that a second body was found without citing a source for the information.

The ministry noted that 19 of those injured left the hospital after receiving the necessary care. According to media reports, none of the 21 injured, who included three tourists, were in critical condition but suffered injuries ranging from abrasions, bruises, fractures and suspected post-concussion symptoms.

For his part, Wazir quickly announced that anyone responsible for the incident, whether the drivers, tower observers, operation engineers, or the regional head of railways, will be referred to the Public Prosecution to “impose a severe penalty on them” in accordance with the gravity of their crime in order to achieve “general deterrence and to make them an example for anyone who neglects, makes a mistake, or fails to perform his job duties.” He also ordered the Egyptian Railway Authority to form a committee to look into the technical reasons behind the incident.

The Public Prosecution later announced the formation of a committee of military engineering experts and another from the railway authority to investigate the incident.

Only a month earlier, four people were killed and over 49 injured in another train crash in Zagazig, Sharqiya. Wazir downplayed the scale of the crash and attributed the incident to human error, emphasizing that it was not caused by technical complications.

Fatal crashes are frequent in Egypt’s railway network. Wazir was appointed following the dismissal of his predecessor in the wake of a mass casualty train crash in Cairo in 2019. While the number of incidents has dropped, the rate of fatalities per incident has gone up in his tenure from an average of 59.1 in 2019 up to 101.2 in 2023.

Railway traffic depends mainly on four key accident prevention measures to ensure safety. Theoretically, these multi-layered mechanisms are designed to prevent train accidents. However, a combination of factors has rendered them largely procedural, leaving safety on Egypt’s railways dependent on the diligence of overworked and underpaid conductors to prevent errors. 

In the response to the continued recurrence of train crashes, Wazir had repeatedly deployed a stepwise response, starting with minimizing the scale of the incidents, blaming them on individual error and then highlighting instead the major developments to the railway system that he has overseen.

Hours before the crash, Wazir and Sisi spoke at the opening of the Upper Egypt train station in Bashtil about having spent LE2 trillion on developing the railway system. Sisi stated that the sector had been neglected for decades, noting that the government is aware that development might cause difficulties for many and stressing that enduring short-term suffering was necessary for the long-term development of the country.