CAIRO: Fifty people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed tracks in a city south of Cairo on Saturday, state media and officials said.
All but two of the dead were children, aged around four to eight, said a senior security official in Assiut, near the site. One woman and the bus driver also died, he added.
The bus was broken in half by the force of the crash. Blood was spattered on the front of the engine and school bags and text books, some bloodstained, were strewn around.
Witnesses said barriers at the rail crossing were open when the train hit the bus. Transport Minister Mohamed Rashad and the head of the railways authority resigned, and President Mohamed Mursi said those responsible would be held to account.
Egypt’s roads and railways have a poor safety record and Egyptians have long complained that successive governments have failed to enforce even basic safeguards, leading to a string of deadly crashes.
State media reported that as well as 50 dead, 15 or more people were injured. A medical source said as many as 28 were injured, 27 of them children.
“They told us the barriers were open when the bus crossed the tracks and the train collided with it,” said Mohamed Samir, a doctor at Assiut hospital where the injured were taken, citing witness accounts.
Assiut Governor Yahya Keshk also said the crossing was open. “The crossing worker was asleep. He has been detained,” he told state television.
Scene of mutilation
The doctor said the bodies of many of those killed were severely mutilated, illustrating the force of the crash, which took place in the city of Manfalut, near Assiut, about 300 km (190 miles) south of the capital.
“I saw the train collide with the bus and push it about 1 km (half a mile) along the track,” said Ahmed Youssef, a driver.
Officials said the level of destruction and mutilation made it difficult to count and identify the bodies.
President Mursi ordered his ministers to offer support to the families of those killed, the official news agency said. Prime Minister Hisham Kandil ordered investigations into anyone responsible for the crash and traveled to the scene.
Victims’ families protested at the crash site, the state news agency reported. Officials sought to reassure them the case would be investigated and they would receive help, it said.
Earlier this month, at least three Egyptians were killed and more than 30 injured in a train crash in Fayoum, another city south of Cairo. In July, 15 people were injured in Giza, close to the capital, when a train derailed.
Egypt’s worst train disaster was in 2002 when a fire ripped through seven carriages of an overcrowded passenger train, killing at least 360 people.
Many more have been killed in rail accidents since then despite pledges from successive governments to improve safety. Accidents involving multiple deaths are also common on Egypt’s poor road network.
50 killed as train plows into school bus in Egypt
50 killed as train plows into school bus in Egypt
For nearly 60 days, Israel has blocked food from Gaza. Palestinians struggle to feed their families
- For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other item has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel. Markets are nearly bare
In the sprawling tent camp outside the southern city of Khan Younis, Mariam Al-Najjar and her mother-in-law emptied four cans of peas and carrots into a pot and boiled it over a wood fire. They added a little bouillon and spices.
That, with a plate of rice, was the sole meal on Friday for the 11 members of their family, including six children.
Among Palestinians, “Fridays are sacred,” a day for large family meals of meat, stuffed vegetables or other rich traditional dishes, Al-Najjar said.
“Now we eat peas and rice,” she said. “We never ate canned peas before the war. Only in this war that has destroyed our lives.”
The around 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are now mainly living off canned vegetables, rice, pasta and lentils. Meat, milk, cheese and fruit have disappeared. Bread and eggs are scarce. The few vegetables or other items in the market have skyrocketed in price, unaffordable for most.
“We can’t get anything that provides any protein or nutrients,” Al-Najjar said.
Beans, peas and bread dunked in tea
Israel imposed the blockade on March 2, then shattered a two-month ceasefire by resuming military operations March 18. It said both steps aim to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages. Rights groups call the blockade a “starvation tactic” endangering the entire population and a potential war crime.
Item by item, foods have disappeared, Al-Najjar said.
When meat became unavailable, she got canned sardines. Those are gone. They used to receive cartons of milk from the UN That ended weeks ago. Once a week, she used to buy tomatoes to give her children a salad. Now she can’t afford tomatoes.
Now, they are on a routine of cans of beans or peas and carrots, she said. When they can’t find that, they get lentils or pasta from a charity kitchen. If she finds bread or sugar, she gives her kids bread dunked in tea to stave off their hunger, she said.
“I’m afraid my son’s children will die of hunger,” said Mariam’s mother-in-law Sumaya Al-Najjar. The 61-year-old said she and her husband have cancer; she has stopped taking her medication because its unobtainable, and her husband is being treated in a hospital.
Mariam worries how she’ll feed her children when what’s left in Gaza runs out.
“Maybe we’ll eat sand,” she said.
Malnutrition hitting children at a key time in their development
Doctors warn that the lack of variety, protein and other nutrients in children’s diet will cause long-term damage to their health.
Dr. Ayman Abu Teir, head of the Therapeutic Feeding department at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, said the number of malnutrition cases has “increased in a very substantial way.” Specialized milk for them has run out, he said. The UN said it identified 3,700 children suffering from acute malnutrition in March, up 80 percent from February.
“Children need the food pyramid for their development,” Abu Teir said: meat, eggs, fish and dairy for their growth, fruits and vegetables to build their immune systems. “These do not exist in Gaza,” he said.
He said a 1-year-old child weighing 10 kilos (22 pounds) needs about 700 calories a day.
The four cans of peas and carrots in the Al-Najjars’ Friday meal totaled about 1,000 calories, according to label information — not counting the rice they also ate – split among 11 people, including six children between the ages of 6 and 14.
Israel has previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the ceasefire., and it accuses Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.
On a recent day in a Khan Younis street market, most stalls were empty. Those open displayed small piles of tomatoes, cucumbers, shriveled eggplants and onions. One had a few dented cans of beans and peas. At one of the few working grocery stores, the shelves were bare except for one with bags of pasta.
Tomatoes sell for 50 shekels a kilo, almost $14, compared to less than a dollar before the war.
“I dream of eating a tomato,” said Khalil Al-Faqawi, standing in front of the empty stalls.
He said he has nine people to feed. “The children ask for meat, for chicken, for a cookie. We can’t provide it,” he said. “Forget about meat. We’ve got lentils. Great. Thank you very much. What happens when the lentils run out?”
The only vegetables are those grown in Gaza. Israeli troops have destroyed the vast majority of the territory’s farmland and greenhouses or closed them off within military zones where anyone approaching risks being shot.
The remaining farms’ production has fallen for lack of water and supplies.
Mahmoud Al-Shaer said his greenhouses yield at most 150 kilos (330 pounds) of tomatoes a week compared to 600 kilos (1,300 pounds) before the war.
Even that can’t be sustained, he said. “In two weeks or a month, you won’t find any at all.”
Israel has leveled much of Gaza with its air and ground campaign. It has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Almost the entire population has been driven from their homes. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps.
In Khan Younis, children mobbed the Rafah Charity Kitchen, holding out metal pots. Workers ladled boiled lentils into each one.
Such kitchens are the only alternative to the market. Other food programs shut down under the blockade.
The kitchens also face closure. The World Food Program said Friday it delivered its last food stocks to the 47 kitchens it supports — the biggest in Gaza — which it said will run out of meals to serve within days.
Kitchens can provide only lentils or plain pasta and rice. Hani Abu Qasim, at the Rafah Charity Kitchen, said they have reduced portion size as well.
“These people who depend on us are threatened with starvation if this kitchen closes,” Abu Qasim said.
Hamas says open to 5-year Gaza truce, one-time hostages release
- An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but collapsed two months later
CAIRO: Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said Saturday as the group’s negotiators held talks with mediators.
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo discussing with Egyptian mediators ways out of the 18-month war, while, on the ground, rescuers said Israeli strikes killed at least 35 people.
Nearly eight weeks into an Israeli aid blockade, the United Nations says food and medical supplies are running out.
The Hamas official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian militant group “is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years.”
The latest bid to seal a ceasefire follows an Israeli proposal which Hamas had rejected earlier this month as “partial,” calling instead for a “comprehensive” agreement to halt the war ignited by the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The rejected Israeli offer, according to a senior Hamas official, included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war’s end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid.
An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but collapsed two months later.
Hamas had sought talks on the second phase but Israel wanted the first phase extended.
Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in the 2023 attack, and Hamas’s disarmament, which the group has rejected as a “red line.”
“This time we will insist on guarantees regarding the end of the war,” Mahmud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement.
“The occupation can return to war after any partial deal, but it cannot do so with a comprehensive deal and international guarantees.”
Later on Saturday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated that “any proposal that does not include a comprehensive and permanent cessation of the war will not be considered.”
“We will not abandon the resistance’s weapons as long as the occupation persists,” he said in a statement.
Israel pounded Gaza again on Saturday.
Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, an official with the territory’s civil defense rescue agency, told AFP that the death toll had risen to at least 35.
In Gaza City, in the territory’s north, civil defense said a strike on the Khour family home killed 10 people and left an estimated 20 more trapped in the debris.
Umm Walid Al-Khour, who survived the attack, said “everyone was sleeping with their children” when the strike hit and “the house collapsed on top of us.”
Elsewhere across Gaza, 25 more people were killed, rescuers said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes but it said that “1,800 terror targets” had been hit across Gaza since the military campaign resumed on March 18.
The military added that “hundreds of terrorists” were also killed.
Qatar, the United States and Egypt brokered the truce which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
With Israel and Hamas disagreeing over the ceasefire’s next phase, Israel cut all aid to Gaza before resuming bombardment, followed by a ground offensive.
Since then, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza to 51,495 people, mostly civilians.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says the military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
On Friday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the hot meal kitchens it was supplying with food in Gaza “are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days.”
On Saturday, AFP footage showed queues of people waiting for food in front of a community kitchen.
“There is no food in the free kitchen, there is no food in the markets... There is no flour or bread,” said north Gaza resident Wael Odeh.
A senior UN official, Jonathan Whittall, said Gazans were “slowly dying.”
“This is not only about humanitarian needs but also about dignity,” Whittall, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told journalists.
Houthis say 8 wounded in US strikes on Yemen capital
- Since US President Donald Trump took office, those attacks have intensified, with almost daily strikes for the past month
SANAA: Iran-backed Houthi rebels said Saturday that a series of US strikes on territory under their control including the Yemeni capital Sanaa had wounded at least eight people.
“Eight citizens, including two children, were wounded when the American enemy targeted a residential district” west of Al-Rawda in Sanaa, said the Houthi-run Saba news agency.
It cited the Houthi administration’s health ministry as the source for what it said was a provisional toll.
An AFP correspondent in Sanaa reported earlier Saturday having heard explosions.
The Houthis, who control large parts of the war-torn country, also reported strikes in other parts of the country, including their stronghold Saada in the north.
They said the fuel port of Ras Issa in the western Hodeida region — where they say 80 people were killed in strikes just over a week ago — had also been hit.
The Houthis, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, portray themselves as defenders of Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
They have regularly launched missiles and drones at Israel and at cargo vessels plying the key Red Sea trade route.
The US military has since January 2024 been attacking their positions, saying it is targeting the “Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” to stop their attacks.
Since US President Donald Trump took office, those attacks have intensified, with almost daily strikes for the past month.
On Saturday, the Houthis said they had launched a missile and two drones at Israel, where the army said it had intercepted a missile from Yemen and a drone coming from the east.
On Saturday, CENTCOM, the US military command in the region, posted footage from the US aircraft carriers Harry S. Truman and Carl Vinson conducting strikes against the Houthis.
At least 11 Sudanese killed in RSF drone strike
- The escalation of such strikes, which have hampered the country’s electrical grid and plunged millions into weeks-long blackouts, comes two years into a damaging war as the army has been pushing the paramilitary force out of central Sudan
AL-DAMAR, Sudan: At least 11 people were killed after a drone strike by the Rapid Support Forces hit a displacement camp in Sudan’s River Nile state, the governor said in a statement, in an attack that also took out the regional power station for the fourth time.
The RSF, which denies carrying out drone attacks and did not respond to a request for comment, has targeted power stations in army-controlled locations in central and northern Sudan for the past several months, but the strikes had not previously left significant death tolls.
“We heard a large explosion and we found two families that had been burnt completely inside their tents, while they were sleeping,” said teacher Mashair Hemeidan as she shed tears.
“We had left Khartoum, fearful of the war, and now the war has followed us here. I don’t know where I will go with my family and children. We have no shelter or place to go to,” she added.
I don’t know where I will go with my family and children. We have no shelter or place to go to.
Mashair Hemeidan, Teacher
The escalation of such strikes, which have hampered the country’s electrical grid and plunged millions into weeks-long blackouts, comes two years into a damaging war as the army has been pushing the paramilitary force out of central Sudan.
Ground fighting in the war is now focused on the Darfur region, where the RSF is fighting to seize the army’s remaining foothold, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes.
There has also been fighting in western Omdurman, part of the capital, where the RSF remains.
The Friday morning attack by multiple missiles, which set some of the tents on fire, injured 23 other people, a medical official said.
Reuters witnesses saw at least nine children among the wounded.
“My nine-year-old son, Ahmed, was killed, and now my nine-year-old Fadi and my seven-year-old Omnia are in the hospital,” said Fadwa Adlan, a resident of the camp.
Some 179 families displaced by the fighting in the capital had been living in difficult conditions in an abandoned building and surrounding tents outside the town of Al-Damer, receiving little in the way of humanitarian assistance. The camp was located about 3 km from the Atbara power station, which was also struck.
On Friday, authorities could be seen hosing down the residents’ belongings destroyed in the fire and breaking down the camp. Residents were seen boarding buses to an unknown location.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor
- The appointment of Hussein Al-Sheikh does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president
- It makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party
RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice president. It’s a major step by the aging leader to designate a successor.
The appointment of Hussein Al-Sheikh as vice president of the Palestine Liberation Organization does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas.
The move is unlikely to boost the image among many Palestinians of Fatah as a closed and corrupt movement out of touch with the general public.
Abbas hopes to play a major role in postwar Gaza. He has been under pressure from Western and Arab allies to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He has announced a series of reforms in recent months, and last week his Fatah movement approved the new position of PLO vice president.
The PLO is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people and oversees the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Abbas has led both entities for two decades.
Under last week’s decision, the new vice president, coming from the PLO’s 16-member executive committee, would succeed Abbas in a caretaker capacity if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
That would make him the front-runner to replace Abbas on a permanent basis, though not guarantee it. The PLO’s executive committee would need to approve that appointment, and the body is filled with veteran politicians who see themselves as worthy contenders.
The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, would have a separate caretaker leader, Rawhi Fattouh, the speaker of the Palestinians’ non-functioning parliament. But within 90 days, it would have to hold elections. If that is not possible, the new PLO president would likely take over the position.
Al-Sheikh, 64, is a veteran politician who has held a series of top positions over decades, most recently as the secretary-general of the PLO’s executive committee for the past three years. He spent 11 years in Israeli prisons in his youth and is a veteran of the Palestinian security forces — experiences that could give him credibility with Palestinian security figures and the broader public.
Now he finds himself in a strong position to shore up his power.
He is Abbas’ closest aide and, most critically, maintains good working relations with Israel and the Palestinians’ Arab allies, including wealthy Gulf countries. As Abbas’ point man with Israel, Al-Sheikh is responsible for arranging coveted travel permits for Palestinians, including VIP leaders, giving him an important lever of power over his rivals.
However, polls show Al-Sheikh, like most of Fatah’s leadership, to be deeply unpopular with the general public. This week’s decision behind closed doors by the PLO’s aging leadership is likely to reinforce its image as being stodgy and out of touch.
The most popular Palestinian, Marwan Barghouti, is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison, and Israel has ruled out releasing him as part of any swap for Israeli hostages held in Gaza by the Hamas militant group.
As Israel’s war with Hamas drags on, with talk by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of uprooting Palestinians in Gaza to relocate them elsewhere, Al-Sheikh will be under mounting pressure to unite the Palestinian leadership.
The PLO is a rival for Hamas, which won the last national elections in 2006 and is not in the PLO. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’ forces in 2007, and reconciliation attempts have repeatedly failed.
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Al-Sheikh defended his unpopular coordination with Israel, saying there was no choice under the difficult circumstances of the occupation.
“I am not a representative for Israel in the Palestinian territories,” he said at the time. “We undertake the coordination because this is the prelude to a political solution for ending the occupation.”
