CAIRO: Four French and one Belgian were among 10 people killed in a bus crash on Wednesday in Egypt, whose tourism industry is only just emerging from a decade of political upheaval and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fourteen others — eight French and six Belgians — were taken to hospital with “broken bones, bruises and superficial injuries” but all were in a stable condition, the governor of the southern province of Aswan said.
The other five people killed were all Egyptian.
The Belgian foreign ministry confirmed that one of its citizens died and others were injured. The accident occurred in early morning when the bus collided with a pick-up as it was transporting the tourists on the 300-kilometre road journey between Aswan and the famed Abu Simbel temple further south.
A photographer saw what remained of the burnt-out vehicles lying by the roadside. Crashes are relatively common in Egypt, where many roads are in disrepair and traffic regulations frequently ignored. Some 7,000 people died in road accidents in the country in 2020, according to official figures.
The Abu Simbel temple was moved from its original location in the 1960s under the rule of president Gamal Abdel Nasser to make way for the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
Egypt had begun reviving its vital tourism industry by promoting its ancient heritage, after the country’s 2011 revolution and ensuing unrest struck the sector.
But the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the subsequent global travel bans resulted in a plunge in tourism revenues to $4 billion, from $13 billion the previous year.
The sector employs some two million people in a country of 103 million and generates more than 10 per cent of GDP.
In August 2021, Russia resumed flights to Egyptian resorts, six years after a Russian airliner crashed after taking off from Sharm el Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. – AFP
