Train crash kills at least 20 in Egypt
CAIRO -- A rail car crashed into a concrete barrier at Cairo’s main train station, causing a fire that killed at least 20 people on Wednesday.
CCTV footage shows travelers walking on the platform as the speeding rail car derailed. At least 43 bystanders were injured from the crash. There were no passengers on the train.
The 163-year-old station is located in one of Cairo’s busiest neighborhoods.
Most of the injured are suffering from burns resulting from the fire, a source from the ambulance authority told ABC News.
Egypt's public prosecutor said the rail car driver exited the car while the engine was still running to argue with a colleague who was driving in the opposite direction.
At the platform, charred shoes belonging to the victims remain at the site of the accident.
“We were going about our day when we heard a loud explosion. The train crashed near the kiosk of one of our colleagues [who] is now in the hospital,” one station worker told ABC news.
All platforms, except for the one where the accident took place, are operating normally, the railway authority said in a statement.
Egypt's transportation minister, Hesham Arafat, resigned in the wake of the crash.
Egypt’s most deadly train crash was in 2002, when a train traveling between Cairo and Luxor caught fire, killing 373.
