The dead and injured were taken to local hospitals.

The dead ranged in age between 39 and 43.

The latest major accident on the Western Desert Road occurred in August, when seventeen people were killed and four injured as a passenger microbus collided with a truck between Upper Egypt’s governorate’s of Assiut and Sohag.

Since 2014, the government has allocated billions of pounds to developing and expanding road networks and bolstering safety as part of the country’s National Road Project.

The government has also tightened traffic law with hefty fines for violations.

In parallel with national efforts to improve the country’s road network, Egypt has witnessed a steady decline in the number of road accidents in recent years.

The country saw a 9.3 percent drop in road accident injuries in 2021 compared to 2020, according to Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) in a report issued in November last year.

Traffic injuries nationwide in 2021 declined to 51,511, down from 56,789 in 2020, according to the report.

However, CAPMAS also said that road accident deaths climbed to 7,101 in 2021, up from 6,164 in 2020, a 15.2 percent increase.