A collision between two trains south of Cairo killed at least seven people and injured more than 100 others on Sunday, Egyptian authorities said, in the country's deadliest rail disaster in years.

The crash happened in the al-Ayyat district of Giza province, roughly 32 miles south of the capital, according to Egypt's Ministry of Transportation. Egypt's Chief Prosecutor's office said a train traveling from Giza to Fayoum collided with the last carriage of a Cairo-to-Aswan train that was stopped on the same track. The conductor of the moving train was among those killed, prosecutors said.

Early figures from Egypt's health ministry had put the toll at four dead and nearly 90 injured; the Chief Prosecutor's office later revised the death count upward to seven as rescue crews worked through the wreckage. More than 100 people were hurt, according to a wire report carried by the Washington Times.

Cranes and ambulances rushed to the scene

Egyptian state media showed emergency crews using cranes to clear derailed and crumpled carriages from the tracks as ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals in Giza province. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered a swift investigation into how a stationary train was left on an active line long enough for an oncoming service to strike it, according to the Associated Press.

Egyptian National Railways has struggled for years with an aging rail network, poor signaling and a patchwork of safety upgrades that have not kept pace with the volume of traffic on the country's single-track regional lines. The deadliest crash in the network's history came in 2002, when a fire aboard an overnight train killed more than 300 people. A 2021 collision near Sohag, triggered after conductors pulled emergency brakes, killed at least 32.

THE INVESTIGATION WILL EXAMINE WHY A STATIONARY TRAIN REMAINED ON AN ACTIVE TRACK

Sunday's crash is likely to revive long-running criticism of Egypt's rail safety record, even as the government has poured billions of dollars into modernizing locomotives and signaling equipment over the past several years with help from foreign manufacturers. Transportation officials have not yet said whether a signal failure, a dispatching error or human error caused the stalled train to be left on the line.

Family members of victims gathered outside hospitals in Giza province through the afternoon, and officials said updated casualty figures were still expected as hospitals finished treating the wounded. No foreign nationals were reported among the casualties as of Sunday evening.