Egypt train crash: At least 15 killed and 40 injured after head on collision north of Cairo

Health Ministry says more casualties expected

The incident occurred after a cargo train collided head on with and a passenger train heading to Cairo (Reuters)

A head on crash between two trains killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more near Egyptian capital Cairo.

The country's Health Ministry said the number of casualties was likely to increase.

The latest of a number of deadly incidents on the country’s railways, saw a cargo train crash with passenger train in the Beheira province in the Nile delta, according to the country’s state MENA news agency

The passenger train was travelling to the country's capital.

Egypt‘s railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management.

The country's president, Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, spoke out last year the need to modernise the country’s railway system to avoid deadly accidents and offer a better service to passengers.

In televised comments, he said 180 billion Egyptian pounds (£7bn) was needed to overhaul the network and he called for the price of train tickets to be raised.

Deadly accidents have claimed hundreds of lives over the years. Figures recently released by the state’s statistics agency show that 1,249 train accidents took place last year, the highest number since 2009 when there were 1,577.

In August, two passenger trains collided just outside Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people, the country’s deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.

In 2016, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.

Four years earlier, a speeding train crashed into a bus carrying children to their kindergarten in the country’s south, killing more than 50, mostly children between the ages of four and six.

Within two months at least 19 people died in a train derailment south of Cairo.

In 2002, a massive fire engulfed a train filled with local holiday travellers. The train sped for miles, with flames engulfing one carriage after another, killing more than 370 people.

Additional reporting by AP