Two foreign tourists killed in road accident in southern Egypt

Five other people were injured, three of them foreign tourists

Aswan, Egypt - July 5, 2010: Landscape of the Nile River and Aswan. ( Philip Cheung / for The National Magazine )
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An Italian and a Chinese citizen were killed on Thursday when their bus collided with a lorry while travelling from Aswan to Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, police said.

They said five other people - three tourists and two Egyptians - were injured in the accident.

The three injured tourists were from Spain, China and Italy, the police said.

Abu Simbel is home to one of the most majestic ancient Egyptian temples, attracting millions of foreign tourists every year who mainly travel there from Aswan, which is also a popular tourist attraction.

Road accidents in Egypt killed 6,164 people and injured nearly 57,000 in 2021 and 2020, respectively, according to official figures.

The relatively high number of fatalities and injuries is widely attributed to unsafe roads, reckless driving or speeding. The number of road accidents, however, has declined in recent years, according to authorities, due to a new network of thousands of kilometres of safer and more efficiently policed roads.

Updated: December 01, 2022, 12:47 PM