Train, kindergarten bus collision kills 49

ASSIUT, Egypt -- A speeding train crashed into a bus carrying Egyptian children to their kindergarten in central Egypt Saturday, killing 51 and prompting a wave of anger against the government in Cairo.

The crash killed children between 4 and 6 years old and three adults. It appeared the railroad crossing was not closed as the train sped toward it, a security official said.

The crash is the worst such tragedy in the country since its first freely elected president, Mohammed Morsi, took office last summer, and will probably give ammunition to critics who say he has done little to improve life for ordinary Egyptians.

Books, school bags and children's socks were strewn along the tracks near the bloodstained, mangled bus near al-Mandara village in the central Assiut province. Parents of the missing wailed as they looked for signs of their children. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said many of the remains were unrecognizable.

A woman who called herself Um Ibrahim, a mother whose three children were on the bus, was pulling her hair in grief. "My children! I didn't feed you before you left," she wailed. A witness said the train pushed the bus along the tracks for nearly half a mile.

Two hospital officials said more than a dozen injured, many with severed limbs, were being treated in two different facilities. All officials spoke anonymously.

Egypt's railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management during the Mubarak era. Accidents due to negligence regularly killed scores over Mubarak's three-decade rule.