Five Egyptians, four French and a Belgian were killed in a bus crash in Aswan.

Ten people – five Egyptians, four French and one Belgian – were killed in a bus crash in the southern Egyptian tourist town of Aswan on Wednesday, April 13th. Fourteen tourists – eight French and six Belgians – were injured when a car collided with a bus on the long desert road leading to the Aswan Governorate on the long desert road leading to two temples in Abu Simbel.

All of the injured a “Stable state” After admission to the hospital “Fractures, Injuries and Superficial Injuries”, He says. The photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw the bus lying completely burned on the edge of the asphalt tongue.

“Two Egyptian passengers on pick-up killed”The prosecutor’s office reported in the afternoon, which began the investigation “To determine the exact circumstances of the accident and to determine those responsible”. The other three Egyptians killed “Coach Driving, His Co-Driving and Travel Guide” The creator of the group of Belgians and Frenchmen, adds the case series. In collaboration with the AFP, the Belgian Foreign Ministry confirmed the death of one of its compatriots and several injuries.

Travel in trouble

Roads are often poorly maintained and traffic accidents are common in Egypt where road rules are not respected. Officially, the country has the largest population in the Arab world (103 million people) and by 2020, 7,000 people will have died in accidents.

The Abu Simbel Temples, more than 3,000 years old, were moved from their original location to prevent them from sinking by the rising Nile with the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s and 1970s, making them one of Egypt’s major tourist sites. .

Carved in the rock on a hill overlooking the Nile, they were dedicated to Osiris and Isis and were built by Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), one of the most famous pharaohs. Abu Simbel is one of the jewels of ancient Nubia, whose borders extend along the Nile and divide its territory between present-day Egypt and Sudan. But if the site has been full of tourists for a long time, now it is much less so.

After years of political instability linked to the 2011 popular uprising that dealt a severe blow to the major tourism sector, Egypt was able to bring visitors back in 2019, especially by enhancing its ancient heritage. But by 2020, due to the Govt-19 epidemic, tourism revenue, which employs two million Egyptians and earns more than 10% of gross domestic product (GDP), had fallen from $ 13 billion to $ 4 billion. In August 2021, Russia resumed its flights, suspended for six years after a fatal accident, reviving the sector in half mast.

Accidents and attacks

But the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military put a brutal halt to the recovery, while the two countries accounted for 40% of tourist arrivals in Egypt, mainly in the Red Sea. On the other hand, the French and Belgians are the first group of visitors to the Baronic sites of Luxor and Aswan.

The regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who wants to set an example of stability in the violent Middle East, regularly arranges visits by ambassadors, bloggers and other influencers to restore his tourism image. Cairo has been authorizing tens of thousands of new nationals to enter its soil without a preliminary visa since early April.

While attacks on tourists – the bloodiest of the 1990s – have often been weakened, accidents continue to occur.

A German tourist and two Egyptian girls have been killed in a building collapse in Luxor (the ancient islands), where the famous Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb is located in the Kings Valley, 250 kilometers north of Aswan. February 2019.

In May 2020, another high point of Egyptian tourism was attacked, targeting the Pyramids of Giza (southwest of Cairo), injuring seventeen people a month before the start of the African Cup of Nations in the country.