A train travelling to Cairo from Aswan flew off the track on Wednesday afternoon after one of its carriages caught fire.
Train 981 left Aswan on Wednesday at dawn and broke down after reaching the governorate of Qena, said Al-Amir Mamdouh, Al-Tayar Al-Masry Party coordinator in Aswan. Mamdouh was among the train’s passengers.
“At the train station in Qena, the driver reported a problem with the carriage,” Mamdouh said. “Station workers told him to carry on with his trip, but to slow down.”
At Nazlet Abdallah, the back end of the carriage caught fire and its back wheels came off the track, Mamdouh said. Passengers put out the fire using the extinguishers in the train.
“The driver was very clever,” Mamdouh said. “He acted very responsibly.”
Two people received cuts and injuries as a result of the incident, Mamdouh said, while an elderly woman fainted and was taken to hospital. All other injuries were minor and required no hospital treatment.
Two major train crashes occurred in January 2013. The first took place when a train carrying Central Security Conscripts derailed near Badrashein, killing 19 conscripts and injuring over 100. Later the same week, a taxi crashed into a moving train at Ard Al-Lewa in Cairo, killing the taxi’s four passengers.
