Рет қаралды 55,859
At least 19 people were killed when a hot air balloon on Tuesday near the ancient Egyptian town of Luxor.
According to Reuters, the balloon plunged into a sugarcane field near the Valley of the Kings and pharaonic temples popular with tourists.
The balloon crashed on the west bank of the Nile river, where many of the area's major historical sites are located.
Transport accidents are frequent in Egypt. Dozens of children were killed in November when the bus they were on collided with a train. Accidents affecting foreign tourists are rarer, but not unusual. Five Germans were killed in December in a bus crash near a Red Sea resort.
Hot air ballooning at dawn is popular with tourists, who are a mainstay of the Egyptian economy, although visitor numbers have fallen sharply since a 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Two years of political instability have kept many foreign tourists away.
One of those killed was an Egyptian, Health Minister Mohamed Mostafa Hamed told Reuters, listing the other victims as tourists from Japan, Hong Kong, France, the UK and Hungary.