‪Twenty-two people were killed and 19 others wounded in two separate road crashes outside Cairo on Sunday, the worst traffic accidents in weeks, security and health officials said.

One of the accidents occurred when a microbus traveling on a highway linking the capital Cairo to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria collided with a truck carrying construction materials, killing ten people and injuring eight others, a senior provincial security official told state news agency MENA.

The accident took place near Wadi Al-Natroun province, about 125 kilometres (77 miles) from Cairo.

Also on Sunday,12 people were killed and 24 injured when a bus overturned on a motorway in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada (approximately 500 kilometers southeast of Cairo), medics and security officials said.

The bus was carrying hotel employees who were heading home for a vacation to join their families during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Photos of the accident showed the mangled bus stained with blood as it was winched, with shattered windows and victims' belongings strewn around.

One body was found under the flipped bus as it was lifted, an Al-Ahram Arabic reporter said.

Thousands die and tens of thousands are injured every year in car crashes in Egypt, notorious for its poor road safety record and loosely enforced traffic regulations.

‪In its latest report in April, the country's census authority said that over 14,400 road accidents occurred in Egypt in 2014, killing more than 6,200 people and injuring some 25,154 others.

‪Late in May, sixteen people, all but three of them policemen, were killed in a collision in Beni Suef, south of Cairo.