TAHTA, Egypt: Rail traffic resumed Saturday in southern Egypt, authorities said, a day after two trains collided, killing at least 32 people and injuring 165 others.
The collision of two passenger trains in the province of Sohag, about 440 kilometers south of Cairo, was the latest in a series of deadly accidents involving the country’s troubled railways.
An Associated Press video journalist at the scene saw the reopening of the railway early Saturday. Authorities had replaced the rail track in the area where the collision took place. The damaged tracks and wrecked train cars were on the side of the railway.
The two trains had collided Friday at the town of Tahta, causing two carriages to derail and flip on their side.
Rail officials initially said someone activated the emergency brakes on one of the trains, which was headed to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly however said no cause has been determined.
Egypt’s rail system has a history of badly maintained equipment and mismanagement, and official figures said there were 1,793 train accidents in 2017.
In 2018, a passenger train derailed near the southern city of Aswan, injuring at least six people and prompting authorities to fire the country’s railway chief.
The same year, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said the government needed about $14.1 billion to overhaul the rail system. Those remarks came a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train, killing at least 12 people.
A year earlier, two passenger trains collided just outside of Alexandria, killing 43. In 2016, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.
Egypt’s deadliest train crash was in 2002, when over 300 people were killed after a fire broke out in a train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.
Railway traffic resumes after deadly crash in southern Egypt
https://arab.news/ryq9a
Railway traffic resumes after deadly crash in southern Egypt
- Authorities replace the rail track in the area where the collision took place
- Rail officials initially said someone activated the emergency brakes on one of the trains that collided
Syria opens aid corridor to Kurdish-majority town
- The Syrian Democratic Forces find themselves restricted to Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast and Kobani in the north
DAMASCUS: Syria’s military said on Sunday it had opened a humanitarian corridor to the Kurdish-majority town of Kobani, filled with displaced people, as a UN convoy carrying lifesaving aid headed there.
The aid came as the Defense Ministry announced a 15-day extension of the ceasefire across all fronts of Syrian Arab Army operations, effective at 11 p.m. on Jan. 24.
The ministry said the ceasefire extension comes in support of the US operation to transfer Daesh detainees from prisons in Syria to Iraq.
The Operations Command of the Syrian Arab Army warned the Syrian Democratic Forces and PKK militias against continuing their violations and provocations.
It also announced the opening of two humanitarian corridors, one to Kobani and another in nearby Hasakah province, to allow “the entry of aid.”
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, representative of the UN’s refugee agency in Syria, said on X that “thanks to the cooperation with the Syrian government ... a convoy of 24 trucks carrying essential food, relief items, and diesel” departed for Kobani “to deliver life-saving and winter assistance to civilians affected by the hostilities.”
The Syrian Democratic Forces find themselves restricted to Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast and Kobani in the north.
Kobani, which Kurdish forces liberated from a lengthy siege by Daesh in 2015, became a symbol of their first major victory against the terrorists.
The Syrian Petroleum Company said it had begun transporting crude oil from the Jbessa oil field in eastern Hasakah province to the Baniyas refinery on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
The move follows the arrival of the first shipment of crude oil from Deir Ezzor fields to storage facilities in Baniyas, where it will be processed.
