At least seven people were killed and more than 125 injured on Sunday when two passenger trains collided in the Al-Ayyat district of Egypt’s Giza governorate, south of Cairo, derailing several carriages.

A train travelling to the south-western province of Fayoum ran into the rear of a stationary service bound from Cairo to Aswan, Al Jazeera reported. The impact pushed carriages of the Aswan-bound train off the rails and down an embankment onto a countryside road.

The Egyptian National Railways Authority said the collision happened between Kafr Ammar and Al-Raqqa stations and that several carriages were derailed, CNN reported. Dozens of ambulances were sent to carry the injured to nearby hospitals, and cranes were brought in to clear the wreckage after rail traffic was disrupted.

Egypt’s health ministry said 45 of those injured had been discharged from hospital after their condition improved.

The casualty figures were revised upwards

Readers comparing coverage will find two different counts in circulation, and they are revisions rather than disagreements.

The health ministry’s initial count was four killed and 88 injured, and that is the figure carried by the earliest filings — including Hiru News, which reported at least four dead and others injured, crediting foreign media. Al Jazeera’s own URL still carries the original “kills four” wording while its updated text reports at least seven killed and more than 125 injured.

This desk uses the later figures, with the earlier count noted. Casualty totals in the hours after a crash of this kind are provisional.

Update, 9 November: Reuters filings carried by Hiru News and the Daily Mirror confirm the death toll at seven, citing Egypt’s health ministry, but put the injured at 112 rather than the “more than 125” carried by Al Jazeera. The two wire services differ on the injured count; the death toll is consistent across all of them. Reuters locates the collision about 76km (47 miles) south of Cairo and reports that Egypt’s public prosecutor’s office is investigating the technical causes of the crash, alongside the inquiry ordered by the president. Reuters also puts the 2002 Al-Ayyat death toll at “at least 360”, against the higher figure in Al Jazeera’s account.

Sisi orders an investigation

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said he was following the accident “with great concern” and directed the authorities to carry out an urgent investigation to “hold accountable anyone found to have been negligent”. In a statement on his official Facebook page he also offered his “sincere condolences” to the families of those killed.

Hiru reported that the relevant departments had begun a broad inquiry into the cause. No cause has been established, and no official has publicly attributed the collision to signalling, braking, track condition or human error.

A railway with a long accident record

Egypt’s rail network is the oldest in Africa and the Middle East, and Al Jazeera notes that the roughly 110-year-old system still needs modernisation despite billions of dollars invested in infrastructure over the past decade.

Al-Ayyat itself is the site of Egypt’s worst rail disaster: a fire aboard a crowded train there in 2002 killed more than 370 people. Al Jazeera reports that several further crashes occurred in the area in 2009. CNN points to two other major accidents — a train that lost control approaching Cairo’s Ramses Square station in 2019, igniting a fire that killed 25, and a 2017 derailment and head-on collision near Alexandria that killed more than 40.

Not reported

None of the filings gives the number of passengers aboard either train, says how long the Aswan-bound service had been stationary, or explains why a following train was routed onto an occupied section of track. None reports whether a driver or other railway staff were among the dead, and none gives a timeline for the investigation or names the body conducting it.