CAIRO, July 16: At least 37 people were killed and 38 injured on Wednesday when a truck failed to stop at a level crossing and pushed waiting traffic into the path of a speeding train in northern Egypt, state media said.

The truck ploughed into traffic at the closed level crossing, pushing a bus, truck and several cars into the passing passenger train, the official MENA news agency quoted a source at Egypt Railways as saying.

A police official, who would not be named, said that 40 people were killed and 60 injured in the accident, which occurred 80 kilometres east of the Mediterranean city of Marsa Matruh.

Two train carriages overturned on top of two cars and another two carriages were derailed, a police official said, requesting anonymity.

Heavy equipment was being brought in to try to lift the mangled carriages, the official said. Many bodies are thought to be still trapped inside the carriages.

Dozens of emergency vehicles were sent to the scene, including ambulances from the capital Cairo, 400 kilometres to the southeast.

MENA said that senior security officials had been sent to the scene to probe the crash.

A witness said the level crossing was just beyond the brow of a hill and therefore not visible to approaching traffic until the last minute.

Despite the carriages’ derailment, the train’s locomotive remained on the tracks several metres (yards) down the line.

The crash is the latest in a series of transport disasters in Egypt, most of which have been blamed on negligence and poor maintenance.

At least 58 people were killed and 144 injured in August 2006 when a passenger train slammed into the back of another on the same track, derailing carriages and setting one train ablaze.

Egypt’s deadliest rail disaster occurred in February 2002, when a passenger using a stove set ablaze a train heading to the south of the country, killing at least 361 people.

Egyptian roads are among the most dangerous in the world. Around 6,000 people die each year in accidents and 30,000 are injured, according to the transport ministry.—AFP