CAIRO: Twelve people, including six foreign tourists, were killed when a coach full of day trippers hit a truck head-on along the west coast of Egypt s Sinai peninsula on Monday, a security official said.
Six tourists, including a Russian woman, as well as the coach driver and the policeman who travels with all tourist coaches in Egypt, were killed, the official said, along with four Egyptians traveling in the truck.
Egypt s official MENA news agency said that four tourists and five Egyptians were confirmed killed and the scattered remains of three unidentified bodies found at the crash scene.
The dead tourists were from the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine, South Sinai emergency services director Ibrahim Hassan told MENA.
Another 37 people were injured in the accident, which happened 17 kilometers north of the town of Ras Sidr during a day trip from the popular south Sinai resort of Sharm El-Sheikh to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Most of the injured were taken to Ras Sidr hospital while seven of the most serious cases were taken to Suez, to the north, MENA said.
The embassies of the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine were not immediately able to confirm the involvement of their citizens.
The area where the crash happened is mostly desert and popular with kite and windsurfers who stay at a string of resorts along the coast.
Each year about 6,000 people die and 30,000 are hurt in road accidents in Egypt.
A coach crash in the same region in May killed eight foreign tourists and an Egyptian driver. Three tourist firms were suspended following that crash.
On Saturday, three Italian tourists were killed when the minibus they were traveling in overturned on Sinai s eastern coast, near the resort of Dahab.
In March, 23 people were killed when two trucks collided head on. The previous month, 29 people were killed in a pile-up on a road south of Cairo in an accident blamed on fog.
Traffic regulations in Egypt are often badly enforced and vehicles poorly maintained. Many coastal and desert roads allow for high speeds, and accidents caused by reckless overtaking are frequent.
Egypt introduced a new traffic law in August in a bid to improve road safety and ease the country s chronic road congestion.
Not wearing a seatbelt or talking on a mobile phone now means a fine of LE 300, while driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street could cost LE 3,000.
With some accidents caused by badly maintained and old cars, drivers of vehicles more than 20 years old now have three years to get them off the road and replace them with new ones.
Millions of tourists visit the country every year, with their spending accounting for almost 20 percent of foreign currency receipts. -AFP
