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At least 25 people were killed and 55 others injured when a passenger train drove full-speed into the back of another on Saturday in Giza, southwest of the Egyptian capital, witnesses and police said.
The toll however "may become worse," a police official at the scene told AFP.
A security services official who declined to give his name said that the trains "were travelling on the same track. One ran into the other as they headed towards Upper Egypt."
The trains collided near the village of Guerzah, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Cairo, when one train stopped unexpectedly and another, also heading south from the capital, ploughed into it from behind, the security official said.
The first train, heading to Fayyum, 100 km (65 miles) south of Cairo made an unscheduled halt, apparently after hitting a cow.
However the second train, on a southbound journey from Cairo towards Assiyut, 400 km (250 miles) from the capital, travelled onwards at normal speed until it slammed into the back of the stationary train, the official said.
Villager Samhi Saleh Abdel Al, 21, told 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 (1600 GMT) when I heard a deafening screeching, then shouts and I saw passengers jumping from the train," he said.
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 in the hope of finding bodies in the wreckage.
Al-Ayyat was the scene of Egypt's deadliest ever train crash when the bodies of at least 361 passengers were recovered from a train following a fire in February 2002.
Egypt's national railway system is the biggest in the Middle East, with nearly 5,000 km (3,150 miles) of track, according to Egyptian National Railways, which employs 86,000 people.
There have been other fatal crashes on the busy rail network.
In July 2008, at least 44 people died near Marsa Matruh in northwest Egypt when a runaway truck hurtled into bus, truck and several cars waiting at a level crossing, shunting the vehicles into the path of a train.
In August 2006 at least 58 Egyptians were killed and 144 wounded in a collision between two trains travelling on the same track. Following that crash, an Egyptian court sentenced 14 railway employees to one year in prison for neglect.
Egypt's roads are also dangerous, with traffic laws frequently flouted and road surfaces not properly maintained.
In 2008, more than 8,000 people died because of traffic-related accidents in the country, officials say.
In July this year thirteen people were killed and 26 injured when a passenger bus and pick-up truck collided head-on on a road in Egypt's Western Desert.
"One of the drivers lost control of the wheel, causing the crash. Thirteen people were killed immediately, and 26 injured were taken to hospital," in Wadi Gedeed province west of Cairo, a police official told AFP.
In the same month eight Serb tourists and three Egyptians were killed when a truck on the wrong side of the road hit their coach head-on along Egypt's Red Sea coast, a security official said.
