By Yasmin Sameh
A traffic accident on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road in Beheira Governorate on Sunday left 17 agricultural workers dead and 3 injured during the workers’ commute to work.
The injured workers, aged between 17 and 25, were transported to a nearby hospital, according to state-owned Al-Ahram.
The month has already seen a number of other deadly accidents. On 11 March, 25 died in a crash near Suez when their passenger bus collided with a parked truck carrying 50 tons of building material, reported to Al-Ahram.
On 9 March, a bus killed eight people and injured 29 on the way to Hurghada from Cairo, according to Al-Ahram.
The World Health Organization reported that 12,000 lives are lost on Egyptian roads every year, and has placed Egypt on a list of ten countries in which it will implement a road safety project over the next five years.
The project aims to control speeding, encourage the wearing of seat-belts, and and boost overall safety awareness, according to the official WHO website.
The percentage of deadly road accidents in Egypt spiked alarmingly to 24% in 2013, closing up to 13,957 deaths, with most deadly accidents take place on Cairo’s ring road.
