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Dozens Injured after Bus Overturns in Sharm el-Sheikh

A bus overturned in Sinai (The Directorate of Health and Population in Suez)
A bus overturned in Sinai (The Directorate of Health and Population in Suez)
    Cairo - Mohammed Ajam
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Dozens Injured after Bus Overturns in Sharm el-Sheikh

A bus overturned in Sinai (The Directorate of Health and Population in Suez)
A bus overturned in Sinai (The Directorate of Health and Population in Suez)

A bus overturned in South Sinai, injuring 47 people, including children, on Monday, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population.

The Ministry announced in a statement that 26 ambulances had been dispatched to the site of the accident on Oyoun Mousa in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Ministry stated that the initial outcome indicates that 47 passengers were injured, 43 were transferred to General Suez Hospital, and four were transferred to Ras Sedr Hospital.

The Directorate of Health and Population in Suez announced that the General Hospital received 43 injured people, including seven Palestinians.

It explained that the bus was coming from Alexandria en route to Sharm El-Sheikh, pointing out that it immediately dispatched ambulances to the scene.

The injuries varied between fractures and bruises.

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health and Population in Suez, Ismail el-Hefnawi, followed up on the injured. He directed health institutions to provide care to the wounded.

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health in South Sinai, Ayman Rakha, said in a press statement that the injured people transferred to Ras Sedr Hospital were in stable condition, and all radiology and medical analyzes are being conducted to ensure their safety.

The bus belongs to one of the private tourism companies in Alexandria, which told Asharq Al-Awsat that the bus was carrying passengers to Sharm El-Sheikh, as part of the company's domestic tourism program during the mid-year vacation.

The company refused to provide any details about the causes of the accident and the number of passengers inside the bus at the time of the accident.

Road traffic accidents in Egypt record high rates.

According to official figures issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, 2021 witnessed 7,101 deaths due to road accidents, a 15.2 percent increase compared to 2020, which saw 6,164 deaths.

In 2021, 51,511 were injured, a 9.3 percent drop from the previous year, which recorded 56,789 injuries.

Accidents cause dozens of deaths annually due to speed, road conditions, or poor application of traffic laws.

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Syria’s New Information Minister Promises Free Press

Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
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Syria’s New Information Minister Promises Free Press

Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)

Syria's minister of information in the country's transitional government told AFP he is working towards a free press and committed to "freedom of expression", after decades of tight control under the country's former rulers.

"We are working to consolidate freedoms of the press and expression that were severely restricted" in areas controlled by the former government of Bashar al-Assad, said the minister, Mohamed al-Omar, after opposition fighters on December 8 ended more than five decades of rule by the Assad clan.

Syria's ruling Baath party and the Assad family dynasty heavily curtailed all aspects of daily life, including freedom of the press and expression with the media a tool of those in power.

Reporters Without Borders, a freedom of information watchdog, ranked Syria second-last on its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, ahead only of Eritrea and behind Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

"There was a heavy restriction on freedom of the press and expression under the regime which practiced censorship. In the period to come we are working on the reconstruction of a media landscape that is free, objective and professional," Omar said during an interview with AFP on Tuesday.

He is part of the interim administration installed in Damascus by the victorious opposition coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The group has its origins in the Syrian branch of the Al-Qaeda group and is designated a terrorist organization by numerous governments, but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

Diplomats from around the region and from the West have made contact with Syria's new rulers, who have also vowed to protect the country's religious and ethnic minorities.

Omar was previously minister of information in the self-proclaimed Salvation Government, the civil administration set up in 2017 by HTS in the opposition holdout of Idlib province, in Syria's northwest. It was from Idlib that the opposition began their lightning advance towards Damascus, 13 years into the country's civil war.

After the conflict erupted in 2011 with the government's brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, Assad tightened restrictions on independent journalism.

- A different way -

"We don't want to continue in the same way, that is, have an official media whose aim is to polish the image of the ruling power," Omar said.

Following Assad's overthrow and flight to Moscow, Syrian media outlets which had trumpeted his regime's glories quickly adopted a revolutionary fervor.

Omar said the new administration wants to "reduce bureaucracy and facilitate the work of foreign press teams" who were intensely scrutinized by Assad's government and had difficulty obtaining visas to work freely.

On December 13, the Information Ministry released a statement saying "media workers who were part of the war and propaganda machine of the fallen Assad regime and contributed directly or indirectly to promoting its crimes," would be "held to account".

But Bassam Safar, head of the Damascus branch of the anti-Assad Syrian journalists' union, previously based abroad, said earlier that no media worker should be held responsible "unless it is proven that they took part in the bloodshed."

That, he said, "is the business of the courts."

Saffar said the Syrian people should reconcile with their journalists, to establish "a new media environment built on freedom" and human rights.

On Tuesday Omar held an exchange with dozens of Syrian journalists to discuss the transition.

"We want media reflecting Syrian cultures in their diversity, reflecting their ambitions, and that transmit their preoccupations and serve as a link between the people and the administration", Omar told AFP.