Egypt's Transport Minister admits to mistakes in questioning over deadly train crash

Résumé détaillé

Egypt's Transport Minister has admitted failings in the country's railways but defended years of investment in the network, after a deadly crash reopened a familiar question: why…

Egypt's Transport Minister has admitted failings in the country's railways but defended years of investment in the network, after a deadly crash reopened a familiar question: why the billions spent on trains has not stopped them crashing.

Appearing before parliament's transport committee on Tuesday in a session that ran for about six hours, Lt Gen Kamel El Wazir said that while he was mourning the seven people killed in Sunday's collision at El Ayyat, passenger safety was his responsibility.

The Health Ministry has said 125 people were injured in the crash. “We acknowledge that there are mistakes, and our aim is to prevent accidents or reduce them,” Lt Gen El Wazir told legislators. “There are still mistakes and there will still be mistakes.”

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It was an unusually candid admission from a minister who has spent years brushing off calls to resign. It came a day after prosecutors laid out what they believe went wrong.

Prosecutors say technical checks showed the driver of one train had disabled the automatic control system, known as ATC, before it ploughed into the rear of a Cairo-Aswan service, which had stopped on the same track.

The system is designed to intervene when a driver makes an error, slowing or halting trains that run red signals or exceed the speed limit. Injured passengers told investigators the train had been travelling at high speed from the moment it left El Ayyat station.

The driver was among those killed. Prosecutors have detained the controller and station master at El Raqqa station, who admitted failing to monitor the control panel for the signal tower and was found to have tampered with the signal log to cover his tracks. The driver's assistant is also being held for questioning.

The prosecutor general has ordered a committee of engineering professors from Cairo University to examine the railway authority's safety, signalling and maintenance systems, assess whether its upgrades have…

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