28 people killed in road collisions in Egypt

Twenty-eight people were killed on Saturday in two separate road crashes in Egypt, according to medical and security sources.

The death toll in a collision between a minibus carrying workers and a truck rose to 22 after four people died of injuries sustained in the accident, according to Deutsche press agency (dpa).

The collision took place earlier Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, initially leaving 18 dead.

The cause of the crash was not officially clear.

Private Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk reported online that the truck hit the minibus, causing it to flip over.

The bus was carrying workers at a garments factory heading for their homes at the time of the crash.

Elsewhere in Egypt, a tourist bus and a public bus collided in the coastal city of Suez, killing six people and injuring 32 others, a local security official said.

Chinese and Indian tourists were among the dead and injured, state-run news portal al-Ahram Online said.

The tourists were on their way to al-Ain al-Sokhna, a nearby Egyptian resort, according to the report.

Fatal road crashes are relatively common in Egypt. They are often blamed on reckless driving and poor road conditions.

Around 8,480 traffic accidents took place in Egypt in 2018, down 23.6 percent against the previous year, according to official figures.

The 2018 crashes resulted in 3,087 deaths, the same figures show.

In recent years, Egypt has built a network of new roads aimed at improving the quality of routes in the country of nearly 100 million.