Cairo: At least 12 people died Wednesday evening in a collision between a microbus and a truck in South Egypt, security sources said.
The accident took place on a desert road in the province of Beni Sueif south of Cairo, they added. Four others were injured in the accident blamed on high speed.
Most of the victims were workers who were returning from a quarry inside the microbus when it collided with the truck, medical sources said.
Ambulances rushed to the site to carry the victims to the province’s hospital.
Egypt has one of the world’s top road accident records mainly due to reckless driving, ill-kept vehicles and poor routes.
Around 1,929 people were killed and more than 7,000 injured in road mishaps in Egypt in the first half of this year, the state statistics agency reported this week.
The government has recently toughened traffic penalties in an attempt to curb road tragedies.
Over the past three years, a large network of new roads has been built across Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country with a population of nearly 95 million people.
