Egyptian Minister of Transport Mohamed Mansour announced on Monday that Egyptian National Railway Authority (NRA) Chairman Hanafy Abdel-Qawi was sacked after a train accident happened in Cairo, killing some 58 people and injuring over 140 others, Egyptian official MENA news agency reported.

The report said that NRA's Vice Chairman Eid Omran was also suspended until completion of an investigation into the train collision in the morning.

Mansour added that his ministry would form a technical committee consisting of university professors and experts from outside the NRA to look into causes of the accident.

Some 58 Egyptian passengers were killed and 144 others injured in the morning when one train rammed into the rear part of the other in a village north of Cairo.

Earlier, Abdel-Qawi has attributed the cause of the train crash to human mistake, rather than technical failure, according to MENA.

Monday's train crash was the most serious one in the last four years in Egypt. On May 1, a cargo train collided head-on with a passenger train in the Governorate of Sharqiya, some 65 km north of Cairo, leaving 65 people injured.

(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2006)