CAIRO: Egypt has ordered the arrest of eight people over a collision between two trains that killed 18 people last week, the prosecutor’s office said Monday.
“The prosecutor general ordered that the two drivers... their two assistants, the guard of a traffic control tower, the head of traffic control in Assiut and two other guards ... be remanded in custody,” a statement from the prosecutor said.
The statement put the death toll from Friday’s crash at 18, down from 19 cited by Health Minister Hala Zayed on Saturday, and an initially reported 32.
The prosecutor’s statement said 200 were wounded, up from 185 cited by the health minister.
Most of those injured in Friday’s crash, that occurred in the Tahta district of the southern Sohag province, suffered fractures.
Surveillance camera footage seen by AFP showed a speeding train barrelling into another, sending a carriage hurtling into the air in a cloud of dust.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has pledged tough punishment for those responsible for the crash, the latest in a series of rail accidents.
Such incidents are generally attributed to poor infrastructure and maintenance.
One of the deadliest Egyptian train crashes came in 2002, when 373 people died as a fire ripped through a crowded train south of Cairo.
Egypt orders eight arrests over fatal train crash
https://arab.news/rz3fp
Egypt orders eight arrests over fatal train crash
- The statement put the death toll from Friday’s crash at 18
- The prosecutor’s statement said 200 were wounded
Iraq begins closing Al-Hol camp, 19,000 citizens return home
- About 3,000 Iraqis still remain in Al-Hol
- The camp currently houses around 60,000 people of various nationalities, most of them women and children linked to Daesh fighters
DUBAI: Iraq said it has begun dismantling the Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, repatriating thousands of its citizens as part of efforts to prevent the site from being used to promote extremist ideology, state news agency INA reported on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Migration and Displacement said around 19,000 Iraqis returned from Al-Hol to their former areas of residence and were reintegrated into local communities, with no security incidents recorded.
Karim Al-Nouri, undersecretary at the ministry, said returnees were subjected to screening and vetting before their transfer to the Al-Amal Community Rehabilitation Center in Al-Jada’a, south of Mosul in Iraq.
“The Ministry of Migration and Displacement is not concerned with security aspect,” Al-Nouri said, adding terrorism cases are handled separately by judiciary.
He said senior Daesh militants recently transferred to Iraq were brought from prisons run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and not from Al-Hol camp.
The most recent group of returnees consists of 281 families, marking the 31st batch received by Iraq so far.
Officials described Al-Hol as a potential security threat, saying the camp has been exploited in the past as a recruitment hub for Daesh and a center for spreading extremism.
The camp currently houses around 60,000 people of various nationalities, most of them women and children linked to Daesh fighters.
Iraqi returnees receive psychological, medical and social support at the Al-Amal center, with assistance from international organizations and the Iraqi health ministry, before returning to their communities, according to the ministry. Those found to have committed crimes are referred to courts.
Al-Nouri said about 3,000 Iraqis still remain in Al-Hol. He added Iraqi detainees are also held in other prisons in Syria, with their cases requiring follow-up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
