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12 killed in bus overturn in upper Egypt

27 November 2014 23:51 (UTC +04:00)

According to the report, the accident took place at Beni Sweif-Minya Agricultural Road. The rescuers and residents managed to save three passengers out of the drowning vehicle, pulled out one dead body while searching for eleven missing bodies.

Egypt has recently been rocked by fatal road accidents over the past couple of months.

In early November, 18 students were burnt to death and ten were seriously injured as a school bus collided with an oil truck on a highway at Beheira province some 130 km north of the capital Cairo.

In late August, two tourist buses collided at a highway near Sharm El-Sheikh city in South Sinai province east of Cairo, leaving 38 deaths and tens of injuries.

Road accidents claim about 13,600 lives every year in the most populous Arab state and cause annual losses of over 2 billion U.S. dollars, a Transport Ministry official told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Lack of highway monitoring systems, poor road maintenance and negligence of traffic rules are behind the high rate of road accidents in Egypt.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics has recently stated that 65 percent of road accidents are attributed to "human element" while the road conditions constitute only to 5 percent.