Al-Ayyat's Trains Have Killed Over 400 Egyptians Since 2002

Let us start with the number that Cairo's corridors of power would rather not say out loud: more than 400. Four hundred Egyptians, in one district, on one stretch of track, since 2002. On Sunday, a train travelling from Giza to Fayoum ran into the back of another on the Cairo-to-Aswan line. One carriage was thrown onto a countryside road in al-Ayyat. At least seven people are dead, and more than 125 were injured, according to the Ministry of Health. Somewhere tonight, a family is standing in a hospital corridor waiting for a name to be read out. They boarded a train that was supposed to get them home.

Look at the record, because the record is the indictment. In 2002, a fire on a train in al-Ayyat killed more than 370 people. In 2009, a collision killed 15. In 2016, three separate collisions in the same area killed 14 more. Each disaster produced the same ritual: expressions of grief, promises of investigation, assurances that the network was being modernised. Each time, the families were told it would not happen again. It happened again.

The government does not lack money to talk about. The Transport Ministry says approximately $37 billion was allocated to transport investments between 2014 and 2024. That is an enormous sum, and every dollar of it should be answerable to the people who paid it back. Yet a member of parliament, Irene Saeed, has had to demand a detailed breakdown of how loans taken out during Transport Minister Kamel el-Wazir's tenure were spent, and what share went to safety, signalling and maintenance. That question should have been answered before the first carriage left the rails. The fact that it must be asked by a legislator after seven people have died tells you everything about how the system treats the public: as an afterthought.

The technical details are damning in their own right. Investigators must establish why one train was stopped on the main track. Was it a sudden technical failure, or did someone pull the emergency brake? More chillingly, they must determine whether the approaching train's signalling system warned its driver about a stationary train ahead. The signalling director has said a stop instruction was issued. But it remains unclear whether the driver received that warning in time to stop. Read that sentence again. A railway built on electronic systems meant to reduce reliance on human error has reached a point where a warning existed, and nobody can confirm it arrived. A warning that arrives too late to save a life is not a safety system. It is a press release.

Then there is the question of accountability, which is where the Egyptian political class has been most evasive. Abdel Moneim Imam, head of the Justice Party, told Al Jazeera that the minister "enjoys the protection of the parliamentary majority," which blocks real accountability. Atef el-Maghawry of the Tagammu Party argued the failures run deeper than one ministry and called for the dismissal of the entire government. The parliamentary committee's secretary, Ahmed el-Derby, said the Tuesday session was not meant to "interrogate" the minister or confront him with "premeditated accusations," and warned against "hasty demands to dismiss officials." Officials, he said, bear responsibility for mistakes made during their tenure, yet the committee's purpose was not to hold anyone to account in any meaningful sense. We have heard this song before. A legislature that promises not to question the executive is not a check on power. It is an echo of it.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ordered an urgent investigation to "hold accountable anyone found to have been negligent." Good. But ask the obvious question: who investigates the investigators? When the ministry that built, funded and operates the railway also runs the inquiry, and the parliament that should scrutinise it is controlled by the government's own majority, the verdict is written before the evidence is gathered. Families in al-Ayyat have been told before that the guilty would be found. The guilty were never found. The graves remained.

This is not only an Egyptian story. It is an African one, and it follows a pattern we see across the continent. Governments borrow heavily to build the glamorous projects: new lines, new stations, new ribbon-cutting ceremonies with ministers in white hard hats. Safety, maintenance and oversight are treated as line items to be trimmed. The contractors and the political class collect the prestige. The passengers collect the funerals. Debt is paid by taxpayers who will never ride those trains in comfort, and the bill for corruption and neglect arrives at the door of a mother who only wanted to visit her son in Aswan.

We refuse to accept that this is simply how things are. Africa has proof that governance can work when institutions are built to outlast individuals. Mauritius created the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 2002, and it has given the island a reputation for transparent public management that much of the continent envies. South Africa established an independent Railway Safety Regulator, legally separate from the operators it oversees, and that separation is precisely what Egypt lacks. Botswana has built decades of credibility by treating audit findings as obligations rather than suggestions. Senegal, in 2024, showed the continent that power can change hands peacefully when institutions and citizens insist on the rules. None of these countries is perfect. All of them understand that democracy is not a slogan. It is a machine for making the powerful answer to the powerful's victims.

So here is what Egypt must do, and what we should demand. First, create an independent railway safety authority, legally and financially separate from the Transport Ministry, with the power to inspect, publish and sanction. Second, publish the full loan and expenditure breakdown Irene Saeed has requested, with a clear accounting of how much went to safety, signalling and maintenance since 2014. Third, require that investigation findings be made public within a fixed timeline, with the signalling logs, driver communications and brake data released for independent verification. Fourth, give the parliamentary transport committee genuine subpoena powers and place its chairmanship in the hands of the opposition until the record is set straight. Fifth, protect railway workers, drivers and signallers who report safety failures, because the people who see the danger first are usually punished for speaking about it. And finally, if negligence is found, name the officials responsible, remove them, and prosecute them. Not as a scapegoat. As proof that the state fears the law more than it fears the press.

To the Egyptian citizen reading this: write to your MP and ask, in plain words, where the $37 billion went and who will answer for the seven dead. Demand the signalling data. Share the investigation's progress, and refuse to let it disappear into a ministry bureaucrat's drawer. To the journalists, lawyers and civil society organisations, keep the pressure on until the findings are public. To the diaspora, your voice carries weight abroad, so use it.

And to every African leader who believes a railway ribbon can substitute for a functioning state, hear this: we are counting. Four hundred and six. Each name is a person who was promised safe passage. How many more will it take before the people in charge are forced to answer for them? We will keep asking until somebody has to.

Based on reporting by ALJAZEERA