An Egyptian bus accident has claimed the lives of four Mexican tourists while leaving 17 persons injured today in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
According to the governor of South Sinai, the tourists were travelling on a bus filled with at least 40 tourists, all from Mexico and owned by a local tour company near Saint Catherine’s monastery in central Sinai when their bus overturned and caught fire.
The injured tourists were transferred to three hospitals in the area were said to be on their way to the monastery, a popular tourist destination, from the town of Taba, which borders Israel.
The 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak and the turmoil that followed has dented Egypt’s tourism sector – a major employer and source of foreign currency which accounted for more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product.
The sector has been further damaged by kidnappings in Sinai and high-profile accidents, including a hot air balloon crash near Luxor in February that killed 19 tourists, most of them Asian and European.