Train crash in Egypt kills 43, injures 122

At least 43 people were killed and 122 others injured as two passenger trains collided just outside Egypt's Mediterranean port city of Alexandria on Friday.

The Egyptian Railways Authority said earlier that a train coming from Cairo, Egypt's capital, crashed into the back of a train that was waiting at a small station in the district of Khorshid, just east of Alexandria.

The stationary train had just arrived from Port Said, a Mediterranean city on the northern tip of the Suez Canal, when it was hit, according to a statement.

The statement did not say what caused the accident, only that the authority's experts would investigate.

An eyewitness who lives close to the crash site said he and others ran toward the site when they heard the sound of the impact.

"We ran to the scene and we found people jumping from the train and lots of dead," said Abdel-Bari Abdel-Hamid.

Egypt's railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management.

Friday's crash was the latest in a series of deadly accidents that have claimed hundreds of lives over the years.

Figures recently released by the state's statistics agency show that 1,249 train accidents took place last year, the highest number since 2009 when the number reached 1,577.

Friday's accident was the country's deadliest rail accident in more than a decade, reports AP.