Trains collide in Egypt’s Nile Delta leaving 3 dead, 29 injured
Trains collide in Egypt’s Nile Delta leaving 3 dead, 29 injured/node/2571404/middle-east
Trains collide in Egypt’s Nile Delta leaving 3 dead, 29 injured
People surround two passenger trains which collided in Egypt's Nile Delta city of Zagazig, the provincial capital of Sharqiya province, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP)
Trains collide in Egypt’s Nile Delta leaving 3 dead, 29 injured
The crash happened in the city of Zagazig, the capital of Sharqiya province, the country’s railway authority said in a statement
Updated 15 September 2024
AP
CAIRO: Two passenger trains collided in Egypt’s Nile Delta on Saturday, killing at least three people, two of them children, authorities said.
The crash happened in the city of Zagazig, the capital of Sharqiya province, the country’s railway authority said in a statement. Egypt’s Health Ministry said the collision injured at least 40 others.
Train derailments and crashes are common in Egypt, where an aging railway system has also been plagued by mismanagement. In recent years, the government announced initiatives to improve its railways.
In 2018, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said some 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $8.13 billion, would be needed to properly overhaul the North African country’s neglected rail network.
Video from the site of the crash showed a train car crumpled by the impact, surrounded by crowds. Men tried to lift the injured through the windows of a passenger car.
Last month, a train crashed into a truck crossing the train tracks in the Mediterranean province of Alexandria, killing two people.
Hamas official says group in final stage of choosing new chief
Updated 1 sec ago
CAIRO: A senior Hamas official told AFP on Sunday that the Palestinian movement was in the final phase of selecting a new leader, with two prominent figures competing for the position. Hamas recently completed the formation of a new Shoura Council, a consultative body largely composed of religious scholars, as well as a new political bureau. Members of the council are elected every four years by representatives from Hamas’s three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership. Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails are also eligible to vote. The council subsequently elects the political bureau, which in turn selects the head of the movement. “The movement has completed its internal elections in the three regions and has reached the final stage of selecting the head of the political bureau,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly. He added that the race for the group’s leadership is now between Khaled Meshaal and Khalil Al-Hayya. A second Hamas source confirmed the development within the organization, which fought a devastating war with Israel following its October 7, 2023 attack. Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter Extremism Project (CEP). Meshaal, who led the political bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956. He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid. He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office. Last month, a Hamas source told AFP that Hayya enjoys backing from the group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassem Brigades. After Israel killed former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor. Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack. He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination. Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections, given the risk of the new chief being targeted by Israel.
