Egypt’s Transport Minister Apologizes for a Deadly Train Crash and Promises Safety Fixes Within a Year

Egypt’s transport minister began a meeting with railway staff on Saturday, 14 November, with a minute of silence. He then apologized to the families of the people killed or injured when two trains collided south of Cairo last week.

The minister, Kamel al-Wazir, promised to finish a set of safety upgrades within a year. The pledge puts new pressure on a rail network with a long record of fatal accidents, and it comes as prosecutors look into how a passenger train hit another train that was standing still on the same track.

Al-Wazir stated that urgent measures are about to start. The rest, including new signaling, surveillance cameras along the tracks and inside locomotives, and more rescue and inspection equipment, would be finished within 12 months, with funding already set aside. He ordered regular and surprise drug tests for employees, and stated that anyone found using narcotics could be fired. He told drivers to keep the automatic train control system switched on for the whole journey and never to pass a red signal.

The 8 November crash happened near the Kafr Ammar and Al-Raqqa stations in Giza Governorate. A Giza-to-Fayoum train hit the back of a Cairo-to-Aswan train that had stopped, and several carriages left the tracks. The Health Ministry’s latest figures put the toll at 7 dead and 125 injured. The driver of the moving train was among those killed. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ordered an urgent investigation. 

In September, two freight trains collided in the same district. In 2021, two trains collided in Sohag, and investigators later found that a driver had switched off the automatic control system. In 2002, a fire on a train headed south from Cairo killed more than 300 people.