FORTY-ONE DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 100, 30 April 1931, Page 11

FORTY-ONE DEAD

TRAIN AFIRE IN EGYPT

UNNOTICED EY DEIYEK

SPEED FANS HOLOCAUST ]

TRAGEDY OF MOSLEM FETE

United Press Association—B.v Electric Tel»* graph—Copyright. (Received 30th April, 1 p.m.) ': CAIRO, 29th April. Forty-one persons were killed and forty-one injured in the worst disas-. ter on record on the Egyptian Rail* ways. An express excursion train, crowded with holiday-makers, took fire between Cairo and Alexandria. The passengers frantically waved garments from the windows in an at* tempt to attract the driver's attention, but the train went on at full speed, fanning the flames, which spread with terrific rapidity. The train was made up of some of the oldest rolling stock on the State Railways, and the rackety coaches flared like tinder.

Indescribable scenes of panic fol« lowed. The screaming passengers in three coaches were either suffocated or burned, or chanced jumping out. The line near Benha was strewn with maimed bodies as many of those leaping out were caught in the wheels and decapitated, or had their limb 9 torn off.

The train travelled for a considerable distance before the signalman at Benha ndticed the flames and set the signals at danger. The victims were all Egyptians going to Cairo for the Bairam festival. The dead include ten children, who■'were either trampled down in the packed compartments, or incinerated.

The fire is believed to have been due to an overheated axle in a third* class rear carriage. The driver was arrested.