19 Army Recruits Killed In Cairo Train Derailment (PHOTOS)

At least 19 army recruits were killed and 103 others were injured when an Egyptian military train derailed south of Cairo, officials from Health Ministry said Tuesday.

The train carrying 1,328 conscripted Egyptian soldiers was headed to a military camp in Cairo from Assiut. Two railroad passenger cars of the train derailed, shortly after midnight in the Giza neighborhood of Badrashin, the state-owned Ahram website reported.

Apparently, the injured were being treated in different hospitals in Giza and the death toll is expected to rise, health ministry officers speaking to MENA, the official news agency, said.

The emergency service personnel and local residents were carrying out the rescue operations, Giza Governor Ali Abdelrahman said.

The cause of derailment is not known yet. The accident occurred two weeks after a new transport minister had been appointed by President Mohammed Morsi to overhaul the shoddy transport system that is blamed for a series of railroad accidents.

Rashad al-Metini, the previous transport minister, was forced to resign following a rail accident that killed nearly 50 school children last November.

Egypt has the worst record on rail safety and accidents due to negligence and lax safety measures have killed scores of people in the past decade.

Four people were killed and 32 others were injured when two trains collided in Fayum, a city in the southwest of Cairo, last October.

In 2002, 376 people were killed in the country’s worst railway accident when a packed train traveling from Cairo to Luxo caught fire.