CAIRO, Sept 15: Twelve people, including six foreign tourists, were killed when a coach full of day trippers hit a truck head-on along the west coast of Sinai on Monday, a security official said.

Six tourists, including a Russian woman, as well as the coach driver and the policeman who travels with all tourist coaches in Egypt, were killed, the official said, along with four Egyptians travelling in the truck.

At least two dead tourists were from the Netherlands and the Ukraine, Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported, adding that some of the bodies had been torn apart by the force of the crash.

Another 37 people were injured in the accident, which happened 17 kilometres north of the town of Ras Sidr during a day trip from the popular south Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Most of the injured were taken to hospitals in Sharm while six of the most serious cases were taken to Suez, to the north, the official said.

The embassies of the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine were not immediately able to confirm the involvement of their citizens.

The area where the crash happened is mostly desert and popular with kite and windsurfers who stay at a string of resorts along the coast.—AFP