Three people died and 11 were injured after the microbus they were traveling in flipped over while en route from Cairo to their hometown in the Sohag Governorate.
The microbus, bearing license plate number 25910 Sohag, flipped over on the west desert road just north of Dilga village in the Minya Governorate. The 11 injured men were all workers from the Sohag and Luxor Governorates and included 50-year-old microbus driver Bostani Ahmed Ali and his assistant, 29-year-old Mahmoud Mohamed Mahmoud.
The three men killed were 18-year-old Mohamad Badawi Mokhtar, Hussein Hassan Hussein and 50-year-old Hamdi Mohamad Hussein. The dead and injured men were transferred to the Malwa General Hospital where authorization was given for the burial of the dead.
In Egypt, bad roads and poor traffic laws have led to numerous road accidents, which take the lives of an estimated 6000 Egyptians every year. Official statistics agency CAPMAS released a report on Monday revealing that, in 2009, the number of car accidents countrywide had increased by 8.9 percent on the previous year.
The report attributed 68 percent of all road accidents last year to human error, attributing only 7 percent to poor road conditions. Tire explosions were the cause of 21 percent of total accidents, while "vehicular problems" stood behind 2 percent of accidents, the report noted.
According to the same report, the number of road accidents last year stood at 22,793, compared to 20,938 in 2008. The number of people killed and injured in car accidents also rose in 2009 to include 3 of every ten thousand citizens, compared to 2.8 per ten thousand in 2008.
Highways had the highest incidence of vehicular accidents in 2009, with a total of 5014 accidents or 62 accidents daily, compared to 58 daily in 2008. The annual total amounted to roughly 2.6 accidents per hour.
Despite these increases, the report goes on to note an overall decrease in traffic deaths. The number of road-accident-related deaths in 2009 stood at 6486, or 17.77 deaths daily, compared to 18.09 deaths daily in 2008.
The number of people injured in road accidents also fell in 2009, at 35,428 (79.06 injured daily), compared to 35,718 (97.85 daily) the previous year. The report attributed the decrease to rising numbers of ambulance stations (1035) and ambulances (2713) countrywide.
The report also stated that the number of train-related accidents in Egypt had increased by 22 percent, with 1577 rail accidents in 2009. The highest incidence of train-related accidents occurred in Lower Egypt and the Delta region, which accounted for 644–or 40 percent–of all train accidents. The lowest incidence of rail accidents occurred in Cairo, with 388 accidents, representing 24.6 percent of all train accidents in Egypt.
In 2009, a total of 62 people were killed and 155 injured in train accidents throughout the country, the CAPMAS report noted.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
