Egypt bus crash: 33 killed as two buses collide near Sharm El-Sheikh

Two tourist buses crashed in a head-on collision in Sinai Peninsula, 31 miles from the Sharm El-Sheik resorts

33 people have been killed in a bus crash in Egypt near to the popular resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh (Getty Images)

At least 33 people have been killed and 41 injured after two buses carrying foreign nationals collided on a road in Egypt’s Sinai province.

Egypt’s state news agency Mena quoted local health ministry official Mohamed Lashin as saying that Russian, Yemeni and Saudi Arabian citizens were among those injured in the collision, but later reports suggest the passengers thought to be Russian were in fact Ukrainian.

The crash happened in the early hours of Friday morning around 31 miles from the popular holiday destination Sharm El-Sheik.

One of the vehicles is believed to have overturned in the crash, and Mr Lashin warned that the death toll could rise as bodies were still being lifted from the wreckage, Reuters news agency reported.

Some passengers were left in a critical condition and have been transferred to two hospitals in the area after 30 ambulances arrived at the scene, while the local motorway was closed off.

Mena reported that one of the buses was heading from Sharm El-Sheikh to Cairo when it hit a bus coming in the opposite direction from the Nile Delta province.

Egypt’s roads and its safety records are notoriously poor, and at least 26 people were killed when a train crashed into a minibus and other vehicles south of Cairo in November 2013 alone, and Egyptians have long complained that successive governments have failed to enforce basic safeguards, which lead to fatal crashes.