A train crash has killed scores and injured over 100 in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo.
Early casualty figures varied widely. A security source said 80 people had died and 163 were injured in the crash at Qalyoub, while the state news agency MENA said 51 people were killed, and the pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite television news reported 65 dead.
There was no formal word on the cause of the crash, but an official at the scene said an investigation was under way.
MENA said the crash happened early in the morning when a train driver apparently ignored a signal and one commuter train ploughed into the rear of another.
"The first train was stopped. We looked and saw the other train coming from behind, screeching," said one man, who had disembarked from a minibus nearby just before the crash happened.
"We kept saying: 'Driver, driver, a train is coming.' So the [train] driver moved up 15 metres, and while he was moving, the two trains impacted," he said.
A photographer said one of the trains had derailed and was lying on its side. It had split into four parts and appeared to have burned.
The crash ripped seats from the train carriages, which were littered with clothes and shoes. The carriages had been crushed together like an accordion.
Rescue workers scrambled to evacuate the casualties, loading them onto some two dozen ambulances. Blood was spattered across the wreckage of both trains.
By midday, rescuers were still recovering bodies, using a bulldozer to pull apart a metal side panel to reach a body lodged in one of the carriages.
About 1,000 bystanders and passengers' relatives anxious for news converged on the wreckage, which lay in a semi-rural area about 20 kilometres north of Cairo, sandwiched between fields and apartment buildings.
The crash was the deadliest railway accident in Egypt since about 360 were killed in 2002 when fire ripped through seven carriages of a crowded passenger train.