Train carrying army recruits derails in Egypt, 19 killed

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi talks with a soldier injured in a train accident at a hospital in Cairo January 15, 2013.

CAIRO (Reuters) - A military train carrying young recruits to an army camp derailed in a Cairo suburb on Tuesday, killing 19 people and injuring 107, Egypt's health ministry spokesman said.

The train was traveling from Upper Egypt to Cairo when it derailed in the Giza neighborhood of Badrashin, a security source said, adding that the train was a military vehicle carrying conscripted youth on their way to an army camp.

The injured passengers were taken to hospitals, Ahmed Omar, the health ministry spokesman, told the state news agency MENA.

There was no further information available about the identities of the 19 dead except the names of the hospitals to which their corpses were sent, published on MENA.

"The Egyptian Ambulance Authority has sent 66 ambulance cars to the site of the accident to move the bodies of the injured and the corpses of the victims to hospitals," Omar told MENA.

Egypt's roads and railways have a poor safety record, and Egyptians have long complained that successive governments have failed to enforce even basic safeguards, leading to a string of deadly crashes.

In November, at least 50 people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus at a rail crossing south of Cairo, further inflaming public anger at Egypt's shoddy transport network.

(This story corrects paragraph 4 to show death toll at 19 instead of 17)

(Reporting by Shaimaa Fayed; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Christopher Wilson)