CAIRO (Dispatches) –Two trains collided in Egypt's coastal city of Alexandria on Friday, killing at least 28 people and injuring more than 100 others, security sources and one medic said.
The crash near the Khorshid station between Alexandria and Cairo route derailed the engine of one train and two cars of the other, state news agency MENA said.
State newspaper Al-Ahram said 28 bodies had arrived at hospital morgues in Alexandria province. Public prosecutor Nabil Sadek ordered an urgent investigation, it said.
Footage from the scene broadcast on state television showed dozens of people crowding around the damaged train cars, with dead bodies strewn on the ground.
It showed one train had partly keeled over in the crash, and medics were seen moving the dead and injured to ambulances.
State television, citing transport ministry officials, reported that the crash was probably caused by a malfunction in one of the trains that brought it to a halt on the rails. The other train then crashed into it.
The dead and injured were initially placed on blankets by the sides of the tracks amid farmland on the outskirts of the Mediterranean city.
One of the trains was travelling from Port Said and the other from Cairo. There was no immediate information on what had caused the collision.
The head of the ambulance services in Alexandria's western sector, Mohamed Abu Homs, said he feared the death toll and the number of injured could rise further.
Egypt's railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management.
In 2013, dozens of people were killed and when a train crashed into a minibus and other vehicles south of Cairo. Many of those killed on the bus were members of an extended family returning from a wedding.
In 2002, 373 people died when a fire ripped through a crowded train south of the capital.