a bus accident in Aswan leaves 10 dead, including four French and a Belgian, announce the local authorities

Ten people – four French, one Belgian and five Egyptians – were killed in a bus accident in Aswan, in the tourist south of Egypt, on Wednesday April 13, according to the governor. In addition, 14 other people were injured – eight French and six Belgians – and are in a “stable state” after being hospitalized for “fractures, bruises and superficial injuries”, specifies a press release issued by the governorate.

The accident took place early in the morning when the bus carrying the tourists collided with a car on the almost 300 km long desert road leading to the temples of Abu Simbel. Traffic accidents are common in Egypt, where roads are often poorly maintained and traffic laws are not enforced. Officially, 7,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in 2020 in the most populous country in the Arab world, which has 103 million inhabitants.

Abu Simbel temples, over 3,000 years old, moved out of their original location to prevent them from being submerged by rising Nile waters with the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s -70, constitute one of the main tourist sites of Egypt.

The invasion of Ukraine by Moscow put a brutal halt to the recovery while its two countries represented until the war 40% of tourist arrivals in Egypt, mainly on the Red Sea. The French and the Belgians, on the other hand, are the first contingents of visitors to the pharaonic sites of Luxor and Aswan.