Two passenger trains have collided south of Cairo, killing at least seven people and injuring 125 others, Egypt’s health ministry says.
The state railway authority said a train travelling from Giza to Fayoum on Saturday hit the back of another heading from Cairo to Aswan, derailing several carriages.
Emergency crews were clearing the wreckage to restore services on the Cairo-Upper Egypt line, the railway authority said, without giving any indication of how long this would take.
Ayman Gamal, a resident of Kafr Girza in al-Ayyat where the crash happened, said people living nearby rushed to the scene, pulled out survivors and called ambulances.
Gamal said he saw around 80 of the injured being taken by ambulances to nearby hospitals.
Some passengers were trapped inside one of the cars of the stationary train and were dead when they were pulled out, he said.
Outside al-Wasta Central Hospital in Beni Suef province, survivors said passengers were in shock and struggling to breathe because of all the dust that was kicked up. Nearby villagers eventually got them out, they said.
Farha Gamal, a survivor who was inside the Fayyoum train, said she saw some of the passengers who appeared dead and others were struggling to find their way out of the car.
“There were other cars that were completely mangled," she said in an interview.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered a swift investigation and said anyone found negligent should be held accountable, according to a separate statement.
Egypt's public prosecutor's office said investigations were underway to determine the technical reasons behind the crash.
Egypt has one of the oldest and largest railway networks in the region and accidents involving casualties are common, though the government has been investing billions of Egyptian pounds to modernise the network.
In the country's worst-ever rail disaster, a fire tore through seven carriages of an overcrowded passenger service in 2002, killing at least 360 people.
