CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — A train jumped its tracks at a northern Egyptian station Sunday and careened through people and kiosks on the platform, killing at least 30 people, the interior ministry said.
Ninety-six people were injured when the locomotive and the first two passenger cars toppled over and plowed through bystanders, a ministry statement said.
The train was traveling from the port of Alexandria to Kafr el-Sheik when it derailed in the station of Kafr el-Dawar, a town about 20 miles southeast of Alexandria, the ministry said.
A senior railway official, Mahmoud Marei, said the driver was speeding because free-riding passengers had tampered with the brakes system between the cars, the news agency reported.
Egyptian railways have suffered a series of accidents in the past four years. The most serious was in December 1995 when two trains collided in fog south of Cairo, killing 75 people and injuring 76.