Egypt pick-up crash kills 18, many children, source says

At least 18 people, many of them children aged 13 to 14, were killed on Tuesday when two pick-up trucks carrying agricultural day labourers crashed in northern Egypt, a local medical source told AFP.

Egypt's health ministry had earlier said there were 47 casualties, including around 30 injured people, in the crash in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate.

“Most of the dead are children 13 and 14 years old,” the local medical source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media. The source could not immediately give an exact breakdown. Local media outlet Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the youngest victim was 10 years old.

A local security source told AFP the workers were mostly from two villages in the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya and were on their way to work on an Ismailia farm.

Authorities said investigations were underway to determine the cause of the crash. The injured were taken to nearby hospitals.

Dangerously overcrowded pick-ups are a regular mode of transport for millions of Egyptian informal workers, including child labourers. Official figures say at least 1.3 million minors are engaged in some form of child labour in Egypt.

Informal labour accounts for nearly 67 percent of employment in Egypt and nearly the entire agricultural sector, according to the International Labour Organization. Between 8 million and 13 million people are estimated to work as irregular day labourers, mostly in agriculture, construction and manufacturing, with limited wage and safety protections.