Tuesday 26 February 2013

Egypt Balloon Crash.

At dawn local time today  hot air balloon carrying 20 people crashed in Luxor, Egypt. Details are still very hard to come by at the moment but what appears to have happened is that gas canisters used to heat the air in the balloon exploded at some 1000ft (300m) sending the balloon and all aboard plunging to the earth in a massive fireball.

So far it has been confirmed that two British, two French, four Japanese and nine Hong Konglese (Chinese) tourists have been killed. Others remain in hospital and sadly are not expected to survive.

It is far, far to early for me to comment with any authority on what has happened. However it is a possibility that this is the Egyptian government trying to reach out to the nations involved ahead of US Secretary of State John Kerry's big meeting on Syria in Italy and Egypt's Parliamentary elections scheduled for April 22nd (22/4/13). This would fit with Morsi's efforts to make Egypt the major power broker in the Arab world.

That said public safety in Egypt is notoriously poor and things are getting worse as the country slowly dies under Morsi. The 75% contraction in the tourism sector since the revolution is having a particularly damaging effect on the nation's economy. This will not help.

13:30 on 26/2/13.