8 Americans killed in Egypt bus crash

Reporting from Cairo and Beirut — A tour bus heading to an archaeological site in southern Egypt crashed Sunday, killing eight Americans, Egyptian and American officials said.

At least 23 people were injured in the accident, Egyptian official sources said. U.S. officials said they were trying to confirm the number of injured and the extent of their wounds.

The bus was carrying 37 American tourists near the southern city of Aswan when it slammed into a truck parked along the roadside, Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency, or MENA, reported. The group’s Egyptian driver and tour guide were among the injured.

An entire side of the mangled blue-and-white bus was sheared off in the crash, photographs showed. Misr Sinai Tours, a large Egyptian travel firm, operated the bus, which was headed to the 3,200-year-old Pharaonic-era Abu Simbel tombs.

The U.S. Embassy said the Egyptian military was helping to move the injured to Cairo. MENA reported that helicopters had been dispatched to evacuate survivors. An embassy official has also been dispatched to Aswan, about 430 miles from the capital.

A U.S. official confirmed that six of the dead were female passengers aboard the bus. An Egyptian Health Ministry official, Mohamed Salah, released the names of those killed, but the embassy declined to confirm the names for privacy reasons. Five of the critically injured were flown to Cairo.

Salah, who was quoted by the state-run Egynews.net website, said the other injured people were offered a choice of being treated in Aswan or being flown to Cairo. He said the injuries included bone fractures and possible spine damage.

A statement posted to the U.S. Embassy website said the staff was “deeply saddened by the traffic accident that has led to deaths and injuries among American tourists.”

Nearly 80 tourists aboard the other two buses that were part of the group returned unharmed to their hotel in Aswan.

Motor vehicle accidents are a major cause of concern in Egypt, where enforcement of traffic rules is lax and roads are often in disrepair. A group of French tourists suffered injuries along the same two-lane southern roadway earlier this year.

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Hassan is a news assistant in The Times’ Cairo Bureau.