Up to 47 people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed tracks in a city south of Cairo this morning, state media and officials said.
A senior security official in Assiut, near the crash site, said 44 of the dead were children, aged around four to eight. Two women and a man, who was probably the bus driver, also died, he added.
The state news agency said another 13 people were injured. A medical source said as many as 28 were injured, 27 of them children.
Egypt's roads and railways have a poor safety record and Egyptians have long complained successive governments have failed to enforce basic safety standards, leading to a string of deadly accidents.
"They told us the barriers were open when the bus crossed the tracks and the train collided with it," said Mohamed Samir, a doctor at Assiut hospital where the injured were taken, citing witness accounts.
He said the bodies of many of those killed were severely mutilated, indicating the force of the crash, which took place in the city of Manfalut, near Assiut, about 300 km (190 miles) south of the capital.
"I saw the train collide with the bus and push it about 1 km (half a mile) along the...
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