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| At Least 20 Killed as Fire Sweeps Through Cairo Train Station | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| CAIRO — A fire ripped through Cairo’s main train station after a train rammed a barrier on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens of others, medics and Egyptian state media said. | |
| Initial reports said that the train had torn through the barrier at the Ramses train station in the Egyptian capital. | Initial reports said that the train had torn through the barrier at the Ramses train station in the Egyptian capital. |
| Photos of charred bodies, some strewn on the tracks, circulated on social media. Clouds of smoke billowed across the city center. Nearby buildings were scorched by the fire. | |
| Some local news media put the toll as high as 24 dead and more than 50 injured. | Some local news media put the toll as high as 24 dead and more than 50 injured. |
| “I was standing on the platform and I saw the train speed into the barrier,” Mina Ghaly told Reuters. “Everyone started running, but a lot of people died after the locomotive exploded.” | “I was standing on the platform and I saw the train speed into the barrier,” Mina Ghaly told Reuters. “Everyone started running, but a lot of people died after the locomotive exploded.” |
| The cause of the train crash was not immediately clear. Images from the station showed firefighters spraying water on a charred, steaming carriage that had came to rest with one end propped up on the raised passenger platform. Some reports said that the train’s fuel tank exploded as it barreled into the station, igniting the fire. | |
| Egypt’s prosecutor general, Nabil Sadek, ordered an investigation. | |
| The crash and resulting blaze were the latest of several disasters to hit Egypt’s dilapidated and accident-prone train network. It is likely to elicit new scrutiny of the priorities of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose parliamentary supporters have begun campaigning to extend his rule until at least 2034. | |
| In August 2017, at least 41 people were killed and over 179 injured in the collision of two trains near the port city of Alexandria. | |
| In 2012, a train slammed into a school bus at a crossing 190 miles south of Cairo, killing at least 50 people, most of them children. The authorities blamed a signal operator who fell asleep at his post. | |
| The government statistics agency reported 10,965 railroad accidents in the decade between 2008 and 2017. The trend is upward: the worst year in recent decades was 2017, with 1793 accidents. | |
| The abundance of accidents stands in stark contrast to the efficient, modernizing image of Egypt projected by Mr. el-Sisi, whose military is building a sprawling, Dubai-style administrative capital in the desert east of Cairo. | |
| This weekend Mr. el-Sisi basked in the limelight as he welcomed European leaders to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for the inaugural summit of the European Union and the Arab League. But he bridled at criticisms of his country’s dire human rights record. |