At least 16 killed in bus crash in Egypt's Sinai

A traffic accident on Saturday involving a microbus and a larger bus left at least 16 people dead and 18 others injured in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, health officials said.

The crash took place when a microbus collided with a public transportation bus on a road liking the city of Tor in southern Sinai to the city of Suez, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The collision happened 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) from Tor, police said.

The Health Ministry said it deployed at least 13 ambulances to the scene and that the injured were taken to hospitals in southern Sinai.

Deadly traffic accidents claim thousands of lives every year in Egypt, which has a poor transportation safety record. The crashes and collisions are mostly caused by speeding, bad roads or poor enforcement of traffic laws.

In October, a head-on vehicle collision killed at least 19 people just outside Cairo. Another 12 people were killed and 30 others injured in September when a bus overturned on a highway linking Cairo with the city of Suez.

Egypt’s official statistics agency says there were around 10,000 road accidents in 2019, the most recent year for which statistics are available, leaving over 3,480 dead. In 2018, there were 8,480 car accidents, causing over 3,080 deaths.