AL-AYATT, Egypt, 21 February — Some 374 people died yesterday when fire engulfed a passenger train traveling from Cairo to Aswan in the worst rail disaster in the country’s history.
Prime Minister Atef Obaid told reporters at the scene that portable stoves used by passengers to heat food on the long trip set off the blaze, which gutted seven carriages of the train near the town of Al-Ayatt, 70 km south of Cairo.
However, several survivors interviewed said they saw nobody using the stoves because the carriages were too crowded to set them up.
The blaze broke out at 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) in the rear part of the train, which continued for at least 10 km before it was brought to a halt, forcing many passengers to jump from the windows, police added.
However, most of the others were trapped in what General Ali Abdel Aal, head of the rescue operations, likened to a “burning prison” as they had trouble opening the doors and escaping through barred windows. Police and rescuers recovered some 350 bodies from the wreckage by midday.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, sent messages of condolences to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak over the tragic incident, which also injured more than 60 people.
Train number 832 from Cairo to Aswan, 800 km to the south, was packed with Egyptians heading home for the Eid Al-Adha holiday.
Rabia Al-Metenawi, a senior municipal official in the town of Al-Ayatt, gave what he called a final toll of 374 people killed. More than 1.8 million Egyptians travel in trains daily.
Survivors of the disaster told of their panicked escape from overcrowded carriages filling with smoke and flames as the burning train rolled on in the night. Forty-four passengers were killed leaping from the speeding train, rescue workers said.
The train’s assistant driver Ashraf Naguib Takla, 28, said that he saw more horrors after the train had stopped and he tried to extinguish the fire.
“I saw mothers wrap their babies in their arms then (try to) throw themselves from the windows of the train to escape and save their children from a horrible death in the flames,” he said.
“Passengers, their bodies on fire, were crushed against each other in the total confusion as they tried to throw themselves out of the carriages in an attempt to escape,” he added.
“When the train left Al-Ayatt, the electricity was cut, and there was a strong odor of burning plastic. People began to cry: ‘It’s a fire, it’s a fire.’ I noticed that the grass was burning outside the train. Heat built up in the coach. I thought death was coming,” he said.
“It was like in a dark well, full of smoke, our panic grew as the train continued to move. People began to run in all directions to pound on the windows, but they could not get through because of the bars,” he added.
Well over 100 bodies, most of them charred, were laid out by the tracks, as firefighters searched the carriages for more victims and retrieved others who had jumped for their lives from further up the line. The acrid odor of burned flesh hung in the air. A press reporter saw many small charred figures which may have been children. Police praised the driver for separating the burning carriages from the rest of the train, saying it had saved hundreds more lives.
Obaid ruled out a technical fault for the tragedy or an error by the train crew.
The driver was not immediately aware of the fire because it erupted in the rear carriages. “The driver had an excellent reaction when he quickly separated the burning carriages from the others before the flames could reach them,” Abdel Aal said.
“His reaction probably saved hundreds of people from a horrible and certain death, as he drove the remainder of the train further on,” he added.
Rescue officials said doors were difficult to open and windows hard to escape through because they had metal bars. “It’s like a cage, which turned into a burning prison,” Abdel Aal said. The carriages of second and third classes first caught fire but when the train stopped the fire had reached the seventh carriage.
Witnesses as well as the survivors said they had seen smoke coming out from the rear part of the train when the train started from Cairo and then maintenance workers had told them it was normal. The injured were transported to several hospitals in the area as well as one in Cairo, Egypt’s official MENA news agency said.
Rescue vehicles had trouble reaching the site of the disaster in this farming but heavily populated region, because a canal separates the railroad from the main road.
President Mubarak said he was “deeply distressed and saddened” by the deaths, according to a statement attributed to him and read on state television. In the Egyptian Parliament, deputies called for an emergency meeting to discuss the disaster without waiting for the arrival of Transport Minister Dr. Ibrahim Al-Dameery, who is now in Canada.
