At least 18 people, many of them children aged 13-14, were killed yesterday in northern Egypt when two pick-up trucks carrying agricultural day labourers crashed, a local medical source told AFP.
Egypt’s health ministry had earlier said that there were 47 casualties, including some 30 injured, in the crash in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate.
Dangerously overcrowded pick-ups are a regular mode of transport for millions of Egyptian informal workers, despite the danger, including to child labourers.
“Most of the dead are children 13 and 14 years old,” the medical source told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media.
The medical source could not provide immediate figures.
Local media Al-Masry Al-Youm reported the youngest victim was 10 years old.
The workers, mostly from two villages in the Nile delta governorate of Sharqiya, were “on their way to work on an Ismailia farm”, a local security source said.