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The death toll from the train crash in Egypt has risen to nineteen as the country buried the dead on Saturday. They died from a train collision that also injured 185, according to a revised toll, as investigators probed the country’s latest deadly rail crash.

Health Minister Hala Zayed told reporters that an initial toll of 32 killed in Friday’s crash was revised down, while the number of injured rose from 165.

“After we honed in on the details of those killed and injured… at this moment there are 185 injured and 19 corpses and three bags of body parts,” Zayed said, without giving further details.

Surveillance camera footage of the accident scene by AFP showed a speeding train barreling into another as it rolled slowly down the tracks, sending a carriage hurtling into the air in a cloud of dust.

Most of those injured in Friday’s crash that occurred in the Tahta district of southern Sohag province suffered fractures.

The first victims were laid to rest early on Saturday with small groups of family and friends in attendance as residents, who appeared mistrustful of outsiders, kept the media at bay.

Other burials were expected to take place following mid-day Muslim prayers, an AFP reporter said.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pledged tough punishment for those responsible for the crash, the latest in a series of rail accidents to plague Egypt. Such incidents are generally attributed to poor infrastructure and maintenance.

It came as the most populous Arab nation struggles with another major transport challenge — a giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal, a vital shipping lane for international trade.

Early on Saturday Egypt was again struck by tragedy when a building collapsed in the capital Cairo, killing at least five people and injuring 24 others, according to officials.

At the scene of the rail disaster, technicians worked through Friday evening to remove five dislocated and damaged carriages. By morning the crash area was cleared of twisted metal and debris.

“We were at the mosque then a child came and told us (about the incident). We heard the collision, so we rushed and found the carnage,” said a 59-year-old man speaking on condition of anonymity.

The first ambulances to reach the scene arrived “around half an hour” after the crash, he said.

“There were children who removed (debris) using wooden ladders” added the witness, who spent the day helping rescue workers.

One train was travelling between the southern city of Luxor and Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and the other between the southern city of Aswan and Cairo.

Kamel Nagi, a 20-year-old conscript, was on the Cairo-bound train after enjoying a few days of leave.

“Our train suddenly stopped and a quarter of an hour later, the second arrived and struck us,” said Nagi, who suffered multiple broken bones.

“I saw it coming, screamed, then found myself on the ground in great pain,” he said from his hospital bed as a nurse gave him an injection to alleviate his pain.

Authorities opened an investigation to determine the circumstances of the accident, while the rail authority blamed the crash on unidentified passengers who “activated emergency brakes” in one train.

The prosecution said it would interrogate several rails employees, including the two train drivers, their assistants and the signalman.

They will also have to undergo drug testing and their mobile phones have been seized by the authorities to examine their call logs, it added.

But media reports on Saturday claimed both train drivers had died of injuries sustained in the crash.

The rail authority said one train hit the last carriage of the other, causing at least two carriages to overturn between the stations of Maragha and Tahta.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli said the government will disburse 100,000 Egyptian pounds (around $6,400) to each family who lost a loved one and between 20,000-40,000 to those injured.

The government has spent “hundreds of billions of pounds” to upgrade the railway system over the past four years, he said, acknowledging that the network “has suffered from decades of negligence”.

Egypt’s railway network is one of the oldest in Africa and the Middle East and improving it “will take time”, Madbouli told reporters Friday after visiting the crash site.

“Until then accidents like this can happen,” he said, adding that efforts to upgrade the system have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic which has delayed deals with foreign firms.

One of the deadliest Egyptian train crashes came in 2002 when 373 people died as a fire ripped through a crowded train south of Cairo.

Nicholas Monday Aswani, a medic and tech entrepreneur based in the US, says he is sceptical about getting the jab.

“To be honest, I am against taking that shot. If it were totally up to me, I wouldn’t. I am concerned it hasn’t been properly developed given the short duration of manufacture.”

Dr Aswani notes that vaccines usually undergo extensive testing before their efficacy is determined. He feels Covid-19 vaccines have been rushed due to anticipated monetary benefits.

“In total, five competing vaccines are available here, among them Moderna, AstraZeneca and Pfizer, but the CDC recommends Pfizer and Moderna. This begs the question – what about the others?”

Dr Aswani says news on adverse reactions in some people amplifies his scepticism.

“I am worried I might be forced to take it just so I can travel – my favourite pastime activity. A few countries are already beating the drums for a Covid-19 passport so I might reluctantly get the shot for travel purposes,” he says.

The University of Aberdeen says it will return a Benin Bronze to Nigeria within weeks, one of the first public institutions to do so more than a century after Britain looted the sculptures and auctioned them to Western museums and collectors.

The university said on Thursday that the sculpture of an Oba, or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin, had left Nigeria in an “extremely immoral” fashion, leading it to reach out to authorities in 2019 to negotiate its return.

According to stories from News Agency, pressure has mounted to return to their places of origin the Benin Bronzes – actually copper alloy relief sculptures – and other artifacts taken by colonial powers.

Neil Curtis, Aberdeen’s head of museums and special collections, said the Bronze, purchased in 1957, had been “blatantly looted” 124 years ago by British soldiers.

“It became clear we had to do something,” Curtis said.

Britain’s soldiers seized thousands of metal castings and sculptures from the Kingdom of Benin, then separate from British-ruled Nigeria, in 1897.

The university called it “one of the most notorious examples of the pillaging of cultural treasures associated with 19th-century European colonial expansion”.

“It would not have been right to have retained an item of such great cultural importance that was acquired in such reprehensible circumstances,” said university vice-chancellor George Boyne.

Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed called the move a “step in the right direction” and urged other holders of Nigerian antiquity “to emulate this”.

Professor Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, said the importance of displaying the Bronze inside Nigeria for the first time in more than 120 years was inexpressible.

“It’s part of our identity, part of our heritage… which has been taken away from us for many years,” Tijani said.

The British Museum, which holds hundreds of the sculptures, has alongside several other museums formed a Benin Dialogue Group to discuss displaying them in Benin City. It has said discussions are ongoing.

Germany is in talks to return 440 Benin Bronzes as early as the autumn, according to newspaper reports, while the University of Cambridge’s Jesus College said it had finalised approvals in December to return one Bronze. Tijani said US museums would also return two more Bronzes.

The governor of Edo state, of which Benin City is the capital, plans to build a centre to store and study the returned artefacts by the end of 2021, and a permanent museum by 2025.

Artist and Edo state native Victor Ehikhamenor said he hoped the decision would prompt others to follow suit.

“Because some of these things are missing from our environment, people are not able to contextualise where we are coming from,” Ehikhamenor said.