Ten people die in bus accident in Egypt, including four Frenchmen

EGYPT – Ten people were killed on Wednesday, April 13 an accident buses in Aswan, in the tourist south from Egyptsaid the governor. Among them are four French and one Belgian.

In addition, 14 other people – eight French and six Belgians – were injured and are in “stable condition” after being hospitalized for “fractures, bruises and superficial injuries,” a government press release said.

The accident happened early in the morning when the bus carrying the tourists collided with a car on the nearly 300 km desert road leading to the Abu Simbel temples.

7,000 deaths in traffic accidents in 2020

Road accidents are common in Egypt, where roads are often poorly maintained and traffic rules are not observed.

Officially, in 2020, 7,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in the most populous country in the Arab world, which has 103 million inhabitants.

The Abu Simbel temples, over 3,000 years old, were moved from their original location with the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s and 1970s to avoid being flooded by the rising waters of the Nile . Egypt.

Tourism very affected by the Covid, then the war in Ukraine

After years of political instability related to the 2011 popular uprising, which dealt a major blow to the main tourism sector, Egypt had barely managed to returning visitors in 2019, in particular by promoting the ancient heritage.

But in 2020, with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, income from tourism, which employs two million Egyptians and generates more than 10% of GDP, fell from $13 billion to $4 billion.

In August 2021, Russia resumed six years of interrupted flights after a deadly crashreinvigorate the half-mast sector.

But Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine brutally halted the uptick, as the two countries accounted for 40% of Egypt’s tourists, mostly on the Red Sea, until the war.

The French and Belgians, on the other hand, are the first contingents of visitors to the pharaonic sites of Luxor and Aswan.

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