CAIRO: A truck and a minibus collided head-on south of Cairo in the early hours of Sunday, killing 14 people and injuring seven others, security officials said. They said the minibus driver was trying to overtake another vehicle on a two-lane road and collided with a truck coming from the opposite direction. The accident took place in the province of Beni Suef. On Thursday, 20 people were killed when a truck ran over a minibus also heading to Minya. The accident occurred at 6 a.m. in the town of Maghagha in the Minya province, about 220 km south of Cairo. The minibus tried to overtake a car on a two-lane road, and hit the truck driving in the opposite direction, police officials said.
The truck driver was killed, along with 19 people in the minibus. The only survivor was taken to hospital in Minya, police said.
In a separate incident, five people were killed and six injured in the southern city of Sohag when a minibus and a taxi had a head-on collision. Both drivers were among the dead.
At least 58 people were killed and 144 injured when a passenger train slammed into the back of another using the same track in the town of Qalyoub, just north of Cairo, in August, derailing carriages and setting one train ablaze. Also in August, at least 11 people were killed when a bus carrying mostly Israeli tourists flipped over near the northern Sinai resort of Nuweiba, security and hospital sources said.
About 6,000 people die and 35,000 are injured each year in Egypt in road accidents, which the transport ministry in Cairo says are the second-highest cause of death in the country.
