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Egypt to build railway line to Libya’s Benghazi

November 9, 2020 at 1:22 pm

Misr train station, Alexandria, Egypt [Wikicommons]

Egypt is planning to establish a number of railway networks, including a line linking the country’s north-western province of Marsa Matrouh to the Libyan city of Benghazi, the Egyptian transport minister announced yesterday.

“We are planning to construct a Marsa Matrouh railway network – off the port of Jarjoub – including the Marsa Matrouh-Siwa line, as well as the Matrouh-Salloum line, extending to the Libyan city of Benghazi,” Kamel Al-Wazir told reporters.

He added that the projects would include “building an Aswan-Toshka railway line that will extend to Sudan’s city of Wadi Halfa.”

Al-Wazir pointed out that the projects would be carried out “in cooperation with investors.”

READ: Egypt ‘will not cooperate’ with Turkey to solve Libya’s crisis, says minister 

Since he came to power in a military coup in 2013, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has repeatedly said he would build cross-border railway lines with neighbouring countries to revive the region’s trade.

The North African country’s rail network has been hit by a spate of accidents in recent years that were blamed on decades of poor maintenance, negligence and a lack of funding.

In March, over a dozen people were injured when two passenger trains collided in the capital city of Cairo, afterwhich Al-Wazir was appointed post to work on transforming the nation’s railway network.