Officials said the trains were travelling on the same track when one of them ran into the other [AFP]

Police said at least 24 other people were wounded when the trains made contact on Saturday in the city of Al-Ayyat, southwest of Cairo.

"Rescue teams have extracted 15 dead and 24 wounded in a collision of two trains," the state-run MENA news agency reported.

"The dead and wounded have been taken to hospitals."

Dozens of ambulances rushed to the scene, with rescue workers trying to use a crane to lift one wagon from on top of the other to extract more people from the trains.

"The trains were travelling on the same track. One ran into the other as they headed towards Upper Egypt," a security official told the AFP news agency.

'Hitting a cow'

Samhi Saleh Abdel Al, a local resident, told the news agency AFP that "the first train stopped after hitting a cow and 10 minutes later the second train arrived at full speed."

"I was sat near the road at around six o'clock [16:00 GMT] when I heard a deafening screeching, then shouts and I saw passengers jumping from the train," he said.

In February 2002, Al-Ayyat was the location of Egypt's worst rail disaster. A passenger using a stove set a train alight as it was heading to the south of the country, killing at least 361 people.

Other fatal incidents have occurred when trains have crashed into each other.

In July 2008, at least 20 people died in a collision between a train and a bus near the Mediterranean city of Marsa Matruh in northwest Egypt.

At least 58 people were killed and 144 injured in August 2006 when a passenger train slammed into the back of another on the same track, derailing carriages and setting one train ablaze.

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