18 killed including children in Egypt workers' pick-up crash

Aan elevated view of al-Attaba district on the edge of downtown Cairo, Egypt. [Mohamed El Shahed, AFP]

At least 18 people, many of them children aged 13 to 14, were killed on Tuesday in northern Egypt when two pick-up trucks carrying agricultural day labourers crashed, a local medical source told AFP.

Egypt's health ministry had earlier said there were 47 casualties, including some 30 injured in the crash in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate.

Dangerously overcrowded pick-ups are a regular mode of transport for millions of Egyptian informal workers, despite the danger, including to child labourers.

"Most of the dead are children 13 and 14 years old," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media.

The medical source could not provide immediate figures. Local media Al-Masry Al-Youm reported the youngest victim was 10 years old.

At least 1.3 million minors are engaged in some form of child labour in Egypt, according to official figures, and are regularly the victims of commuter accidents.

The workers, mostly from two villages in the Nile delta governorate of Sharqiya, were "on their way to work on an Ismailia farm," a local security source told AFP.

Authorities said investigations were underway to determine the cause of the crash, while the injured were transported to nearby hospitals.

Informal labour accounts for nearly 67 percent of employment in Egypt and nearly the entire agricultural sector, according to the International Labour Organization.

Between 8 and 13 million people are estimated to work as "irregular" day labourers -- mostly in agriculture, construction and manufacturing -- and lack robust wage and safety protections.