Egypt: 10 dead, including 4 French and a Belgian, in a bus accident in Aswan – RMC

Four French and a Belgian died in a bus accident that left 10 dead in Aswan, in the tourist south of Egypt. Ten people, four French, a Belgian and five Egyptians, were killed in a bus accident on Wednesday in Aswan, in the touristic south of Egypt, said the governor. In addition, 14 other people were injured – eight French and six Belgians – and are in “stable condition” after being hospitalized for ” broken bones, bruises and superficial injuries,” said a statement released by the governorate. The accident took place early in the morning when the bus carrying the tourists collided with a car on the desert road nearly 300 km leading to the temples of Abu Simbel. Traffic accidents are common in Egypt where the roads are often poorly maintained and the rules of the road not respected. Officially, 7,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in 2020 in the most populous country in the Arab world, which has 103 million inhabitants. The temples of Abu Simbel, more than 3,000 years old, moved out of their original location to prevent them from being overwhelmed by the rising waters of the Nile with the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s-70s, are one of the main tourist sites in Egypt.After years political instability linked to the popular revolt of 2011, which dealt a severe blow to the key sector of tourism, Egypt had barely managed to bring visitors back in 2019, in particular by promoting its ancient heritage. But in 2020 , with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, revenue from tourism, which employs two million Egyptians and generates more than 10% of GDP, plunged from thirteen billion to four billion dollars. In August 2021, Russia has resumed flights interrupted during nt six years after a deadly crash, reinvigorating the sector at half mast. But the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow put a brutal halt to the revival while its two countries represented until the war 40% of tourist arrivals in Egypt, mainly on the Red Sea. The French and the Belgians, on the other hand, are the first contingents of visitors to the pharaonic sites of Luxor and Aswan.