At least 15 people were killed late on Thursday in two separate traffic accidents in northern Egyptian cities, the latest of a series of almost daily fatal crashes plaguing the country's roads. A crash involving a truck and a microbus in the western part of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria left at least eight dead on Thursday, state news agency MENA reported. Five others were wounded in the incident. In Beheira governorate, north of Cairo, seven others were killed and 11 injured when a private vehicle smashed into a microbus on a motorway in the industrial city of Kafr El-Dawwar, MENA said late on Thursday. Traffic accidents, which the government's census agency says claim 18 lives a day, are commonplace in Egypt due to badly maintained roads and poorly enforced traffic laws. According to a 2012 report by the World Health Organisation, road accidents kill about 12,000 people in Egypt every year. Last Tuesday, two accidents on highways in and near Cairo left five dead. A recent government report said that 100,000 car accidents took place in Egypt from 2008 to 2012, with 33,000 killed and another 150,000 injured. The report, jointly drawn up in April by the ministries of transport and interior, said that heavy trucks were to blame for 40 percent of traffic accidents, while private vehicles causes 33 percent of crashes, followed by microbuses (9 percent) and buses (7 percent). Source : Ahram online
