In a similar story to the pick-up truck hit by a train in South Africa a couple of months ago, over the weekend a school bus in Egypt was hit by a train, killing around 50 children ages four to six and injuring several others.
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| a crowd around the wreck of the train |
The "train crossing minder" was asleep on the job and hadn't lowered the crossing bars, so the bus crossed the train tracks only to be T-boned by the oncoming train. The train then pushed the bus for about a kilometer (about half a mile), dragging the bloody limbs of the children along with it.
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| looking into the rubble |
Random Kate Thoughts: This is a horrible tragedy for Egypt. I've taken a night train in Egypt before, south from Cairo to Luxor (this crash was actually south of Cairo, I do wonder if it was the same train...), and it was an extremely sketchy experience. The transit system in general is pretty terrible and needs vast improvement. The change of regime after Arab Spring didn't make a ton of concrete domestic changes. Various transportation ministers have resigned over this crash, but that won't bring back the children who were lost, or stop the future loss of innocents. President Mosni had spent the week before touting Egypt as the main ally to Palestine in the region among his international friends, but it does seem like his focus on foreign policy has left some rather large holes domestically. I admit that it has to be a balance between foreign and domestic focus for any government, but perhaps the lever needs to swing the other way now for Egypt.
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