Child labourers among 18 killed in Egypt pick-up crash
Egypt's health ministry had earlier said there were 47 casualties, including around 30 injured, in the crash in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate.
Relatives and friends wait outside the Al-Qassasin Specialized Hospital for news following a road crash in which at least 18 people were killed, in the town of al-Qassasin, in the Ismailia Governorate, about 120 km east of Cairo on August 11, 2026. (AFP)
________________
ISMAILIA - At least 18 people, many of them children aged 13 to 14, were killed on Tuesday in northern Egypt when two pick-up trucks carrying agricultural day labourers crashed, a local medical source told AFP.
Egypt's health ministry had earlier said there were 47 casualties, including around 30 injured, in the crash in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate.
Dangerously overcrowded pick-ups are a regular mode of transport for millions of Egyptian informal workers, despite the danger they pose, including to child labourers.
Jomana Waleed, a 16-year-old survivor of the crash, said her sister's last words were "I want to see mama".
"And then she stopped breathing, she was dead," she told AFP outside the Al-Qasasin Hospital, her eyes red with tears.
"Next thing I knew we were flipped over on the ground," she said, her sister dying next to her.
Waleed was released from hospital Tuesday with a slight injury to her back, while her brother Mohamed was sent to another hospital, their grandmother Nour Ahmed Abdulkader told AFP.
Families gathered outside the Al-Qasasin Hospital in Ismailia Tuesday, an AFP correspondent reported, desperate for news of their loved ones.
Child labour
A medical source told AFP that "most of the dead are children 13 and 14 years old", but could not immediately provide exact figures.
Local media Al-Masry Al-Youm reported the youngest victims were two 10-year-old girls.
The workers, mostly from two villages in the Nile delta governorate of Sharqiya, were employed on an Ismailia farm, a local security source told AFP.
Local media reported that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had directed authorities to immediately investigate the cause of the crash.
Informal labour accounts for nearly 67 percent of employment in Egypt and almost the entire agricultural sector, according to the International Labour Organization.
Between eight and 13 million people are estimated to work as "irregular" day labourers -- mostly in agriculture, construction and manufacturing -- and lack robust wage and safety protections.
Road accidents are common in Egypt, where traffic rules are unevenly enforced and many roads are in poor repair.
Accidents often involve underage labourers travelling to work in rural areas.