Video: Two passenger trains collide in Egypt: security source
Several carriages overturned at the crash site in the southern province of Sohag
Cairo: Update:
At least 32 people were killed and 91 injured when two trains collided in central Egypt on Friday, health ministry officials said.
"Unknown individuals" triggered the emergency brakes on one of the trains causing it to stop, the rail authority said. The second train, which was travelling in the same direction, crashed into the first from behind, it added.
Pictures showed train carriages derailed, several of them badly damaged, above a channel of water, as crowds looked on.
The public prosecutor's office said it had ordered an investigation into the crash which took place close to the Nile-side town of Tahta, about 365km (230 miles) south of Cairo.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi mourned the victims of the crash in a statement posted on his official social media and said those responsible would be punished.
Sisi also told Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to head to the site of the crash with the ministers of health and social solidarity, state television reported.
The health ministry said 32 people had died and dozens of ambulances were taking casualties to local hospitals. A health ministry spokesman said 91 people were injured.
Train crash triggered by 'unknown individuals'
Egypt's railway authority said on Friday that two trains collided causing dozens of casualties after emergency brakes were triggered by "unknown individuals" near the city of Sohag.
The brakes caused one of the trains to stop and the other to crash into it from behind, and the authority is conducting further investigations, it said.
32 dead in train crash
Thirty-two people were killed and 66 others injured Friday after two trains collided south of Cairo, the Health Ministry said.
“The final casualties are being checked to determine if there is any case of death or not,” spokesman for the Health Minister Dr Khalid Mejahed added.
The accident occurred in the governorate of Sohag, about 460 kilometres south of Cairo, when a passenger train rammed into another, causing four couches to overturn.
Some 36 ambulance cars rushed to the site, said Mejahed.
Ministers of transport and health headed to the scene to inspect rescue efforts, local media reported.
Egypt’s worst rail accident, in which at least 350 people were killed, occured in 2002.