The accident took place near Juhaynah county on the Western Desert Road between Assiut and Sohag, according to security authorities.

Ambulances were dispatched to the site of the accident and transferred the bodies of the deceased to the morgue and the injured to Sohag university hospital to receive treatment.

Governor of Sohag Tariq El-Fiqi offered his sincere condolences to the families of the victims, ordering medical care to be provided to the injured.

Egypt has witnessed a steady decline in the number of road accidents over the past years in parallel with national efforts to improve the country’s road network through the National Road Project that was launched in 2014.

The project has successfully developed and widened Egypt’s 23-000 kilometre road network and has constructed or upgraded 7,000 kilometres.

By 2019, Egypt climbed to 28th place in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report in terms of the quality of its road infrastructure - compared to 118th in 2014.

The country recorded a 9.3 percent drop in traffic injuries in 2021 compared to 2020, according to a recent report released by the country’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) in July 2022.

Traffic injuries across Egypt in 2021 recorded 51,511, down from 2020’s 56,789, the CAPMAS report said.

The report added that 7,101 people died in road mishaps, up from the 6,164 deaths recorded a year prior – a 15.2 percent increase.