Awatif Kamel did not expect that her daily trip between Fayoum and Cairo, which she relies on to provide a source of income for her family, would end with a serious spinal injury following a two-train collision in the Al-Ayat area on Sunday, which, according to the official toll, resulted in the deaths of at least seven people and the injury of dozens of others.
Awatef is accustomed to traveling daily on the suburban train, where she transports vegetables to Cairo to sell them before returning to Fayoum with the income she earns that helps her support her son with disabilities and her five daughters.
She told the BBC that she was on her way back to Fayoum when the train stopped for a while in the Al-Ayat area, before resuming its journey. Moments later, she heard a strong crash, causing her to lose consciousness and later wake up in the hospital suffering from a severe back injury.
Awatif's story comes among many testimonies that emerged following the accident, in an attempt to monitor its humanitarian repercussions on the passengers of the suburban train, which thousands of low-income passengers rely on daily and call it the "train of the poor."
Eyewitnesses who spoke to the BBC said that the scene of the accident was tragic, with bodies found under the wheels of the train and a number of carriages destroyed, while the people of the village of Raqqa near the site of the accident rushed to help the passengers and try to extract the injured people stuck inside the wrecked carriages.
Witnesses add that ambulances and civil protection forces arrived at the site without delay.
They point out that some cranes were unable to lift the wreckage of the wagons, and that two wagons of the emergency train sent by the Railway Authority to help derailed.
The people also tried to help the rescue teams recover the victims, as is usual in such incidents, and some witnesses say that a number of the injured died inside the ambulances before they reached the hospitals to which the victims were transferred.
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Accountability of the Minister of Transport
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Official visits continued to the site of the accident, after a statement issued by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to offer condolences and support to the families of the victims and the injured, in which he directed the necessity of investigating the circumstances of the accident and holding those responsible accountable.
The incident sparked widespread criticism on social media and in local media, much of which focused on the Minister of Transport, Lieutenant General Kamel Al-Wazir, amid accusations of deficiencies in the management of the railway facility, despite what was announced that billions of pounds had been spent on developing it over the past years.
Users circulated a video clip showing the minister in a heated discussion with a citizen during his visit to the accident site. The citizen was talking about his sadness due to repeated train accidents, so the minister asked him to "be silent and let the authorities work."
In the context of criticism, media figures and politicians pointed out that the state spent large sums of money on modernizing the railway network, signaling systems and monitoring train movement, wondering to what extent these investments reflect the level of safety in the facility.
Egyptian journalist Amr Adeeb said, in his evening program, that the Ministry of Transport has repeatedly promised to reduce accidents related to the human factor by introducing electronic control systems, including the TCS system, wondering about the efficiency of these systems and their ability to prevent accidents.
On the other hand, journalist Ahmed Moussa, whose program follows the activity of the Minister of Transport and his projects, tried to calm the criticism directed at him, saying that there is a tendency to hold a number of Railway Authority officials accountable, including the head of the Authority and his assistant for the long-distance sector, due to suspicions of negligence.
For his part, the journalist Mohamed Al-Baz described the talk about the minister’s political and social responsibility as a “political luxury” that is not commensurate, as he put it, with the difficult financial circumstances that the state faces in providing the expenses of operating and maintaining the railway facility.
“Falling from the window of the train car saved me from death.”
Parliamentary demands for accountability
The Transport Committee of the Egyptian House of Representatives scheduled an emergency session on Tuesday to question the minister regarding the causes and repercussions of the accident, and sent an official invitation to him to attend.
The accident reopened the debate regarding the political responsibility of the Minister of Transport, and prompted a number of members of the House of Representatives to move to hold the ministry accountable for safety and operating procedures, and to review what was spent on developing railways.
Representative Freddy Al-Bayyadi, a member of the House of Representatives from the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, submitted a statement in which he called for the Minister of Transport to be held accountable for the facility’s performance, and the formation of an independent technical committee that includes specialists from outside the Ministry and the Railway Authority, to review the circumstances of the accident, evaluate safety and operating systems, and announce the results of the investigation to public opinion in a transparent manner, without prejudice to the jurisdiction of the judicial investigating authorities.
Representative Maha Abdel Nasser, Undersecretary of the Communications and Information Technology Committee in the House of Representatives, called for a serious and transparent investigation, holding everyone proven to be negligent accountable, and announcing the results to public opinion, in addition to the dismissal of the Minister of Transport.
Representative Irene Saeed, head of the parliamentary body of the Reform and Development Party in the House of Representatives, also called on the Minister of Transport to provide a detailed statement on the expenditures of the loans obtained by the Ministry during the year 2026, the percentage of them directed to developing the safety, signals and maintenance system, and the number of accidents for which the Authority was proven responsible during the years 2025 and 2026.
“Blood-drenched, stunned, and angry”: This is how a passenger train journey turned into a disaster in Spain
In this context, Hassan Salama, professor of political science at Cairo University, believes that parliamentary movements should be viewed as requests for interrogation and accountability, not necessarily dismissal requests, considering that they represent a positive step to activate the role of legislative and oversight institutions.
Salama says that the Minister of Transport is not criminally responsible for the accident simply because he held the position, although it is possible that he bears political responsibility for the performance of the ministry and the sector under his supervision.
He adds that spending on the transportation and railway sector is not a problem in itself, given that these facilities provide service to hundreds of thousands of citizens, but it is necessary that the investments allocated to them are reflected in improving the service and raising its efficiency.
This vision comes at a time when positions differ regarding the limits of the minister’s responsibility: while his critics focus on his political responsibility for the sector’s performance, his defenders believe that direct responsibility for accidents must be determined in light of investigations, and that the minister alone cannot be held accountable for daily operating errors.
On the other hand, the Civil Democratic Movement, an opposition political grouping that includes public figures and democratic parties and was founded in 2017, demanded the dismissal of the Minister of Transport and the formation of a committee.
An independent technician from outside the government to investigate the incident and announce its findings to public opinion.
Khaled Talima, the movement's spokesman, told the BBC that the demand to dismiss Kamel al-Wazir is not new, and that it was raised after the regional ring road accident in June 2025, which resulted in the deaths of 18 girls who were agricultural workers and their driver.
Talima says that the compensation paid by the government in such cases is not, in his opinion, proportional to the size of the losses that families suffer, especially when they lose their sole breadwinner or source of income, stressing the importance of providing care for the families of the victims, their children, and their relatives.
Huge spending...and questionable results
Data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics indicate that the number of train accidents in Egypt decreased during the year 2025 to 170 accidents, compared to 220 accidents in 2024, a decrease of 22.7 percent.
The data also showed that the number of deaths related to these accidents decreased to 39, while the number of injured increased to 139.
But these annual numbers alone do not provide a comprehensive picture of the development of accident rates during the Minister Kamel’s tenure as Ministry of Transport, since 2019, and do not allow for assessing the impact of investments in the railway system on safety without a clear time comparison and knowing the nature of the recorded accidents.
The Misr Station accident in February 2019, which killed 22 people and injured 52 others, prompted then Minister of Transport Hisham Arafat to submit his resignation.
According to the figures published on the Ministry of Transport’s website, the total investments allocated to the Ministry in its various bodies during the period from 2014 to 2024 amounted to about two trillion Egyptian pounds, equivalent to about 37 billion dollars according to the exchange rate included in the data.
These investments include various transportation sectors, and are not limited to railways.
With regard to railways specifically, the former head of the Egyptian National Railway Authority, Engineer Mohamed Amer, said in previous statements that the state has implemented investments worth 366 billion pounds, equivalent to about 6.8 billion dollars, to modernize and develop the system in recent years.
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