Twenty-five dead as trains collide in Egypt

At least 25 people have been killed in a train crash in Egypt after a passenger train slammed at full speed into the back of a second train.

Another 55 passengers were injured in the accident which happened on Saturday 40 kilometres southwest of Cairo, at Al-Ayyat, near the village of Guerzah.

The trains were travelling on the same track, and were both headed in the same direction.

After one, nearly empty train stopped unexpectedly the second, a first class train full of passengers which was also heading south from Cairo, the capital, ploughed into it from behind.

The first train had made an unscheduled halt, apparently after hitting a cow. However the second train continued on at normal speed until it ran into the back of the stationary train.

Villager Samhi Saleh Abdel Al, 21, said: "The first train stopped after hitting a cow and 10 minutes later the second train arrived at full speed.

"I was sat near the road at around six o'clock (1600 GMT) when I heard a deafening screeching, then shouts and I saw passengers jumping from the train," he said.

Dozens of ambulances rushed to the scene, with rescue workers trying to use a crane to lift one wagon from on top of the other in the hope of finding bodies in the wreckage.

Security sources said the moving train was headed toward Assiut and Aswan, a major tourist attraction that is home to pharaonic ruins. No foreigners were reported among the casualties.

Al-Ayyat was the scene of Egypt's deadliest train crash when the bodies of at least 361 passengers were recovered from a train following a fire in February 2002.

Egypt's national railway system is the biggest in the Middle East, with nearly 5,000 kilometres of track, according to Egyptian National Railways.

In July 2008, at least 44 people died near Marsa Matruh in northwest Egypt when a runaway truck hurtled into a bus, truck and several cars waiting at a level crossing, shunting the vehicles into the path of a train.

In August 2006 at least 58 Egyptians were killed and 144 wounded in a collision between two trains travelling on the same track. Following that crash, an Egyptian court sentenced 14 railway employees to one year in prison for neglect.