Seventeen Egyptians drowned and some 28 others were also feared to have died Monday when their bus plunged into a Nile canal in the southern part of Egypt after colliding with another bus, police said.
Police said they had recovered 17 bodies from the irrigation canal four hours after the crash occurred, at 3:40 p.m. (local time) near the village of El Fant, an estimated 160 kilometers south of Cairo, in the Beni Suef province.
"The windows were closed because of the air conditioning and there is little hope for the others to have escaped," a police officer told AFP. About 45 people were on the bus that was heading to the capital when it crashed head-on with a similar one, where the police officer reported 37 people injured, including four children.
He said the rescue was suspended at nightfall and would resume with daybreak. "We won't know the exact toll before we count the bodies," he said. "There are no foreign tourists among the victims," province governor Saeed Naggar told the official MENA news agency.
He said all the passengers were Egyptians, with two of them, who were seriously injured, taken to Cairo for treatment, he added. (Albawaba.com)
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