video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: The moment when a hot air balloon crashed on Tuesday near the ancient Egyptian town of Luxor after a mid-air gas explosion was captured on video by a passenger in another balloon. At least 19 people were killed when the balloon came down in farmland near the Valley of the Kings and pharaonic temples popular with tourists. In the footage smoke can be seen pouring from the balloon before it deflates and the basket crashes to earth. One Egyptian was also killed, Health Minister Mohamed Mostafa Hamed told Reuters, listing the other victims as tourists from Japan, China, France, Britain and Hungary. The balloon crashed on the west bank of the Nile river, where many of the area's major historical sites are located. Transport accidents are frequent in Egypt. Dozens of children were killed in November when the bus they were on collided with a train. Accidents affecting foreign tourists are rarer, but not unusual. Five Germans were killed in December in a bus crash near a Red Sea resort. Hot air ballooning at dawn is popular with tourists, who are a mainstay of the Egyptian economy, although visitor numbers have fallen sharply since a 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Two years of political instability have kept many foreign tourists away.