At least 18 people, most of them children aged between 10 and 14, were killed on Tuesday when two overcrowded pick-up trucks collided in the Dawawis area of Ismailia governorate (a province in northern Egypt near the Suez Canal), with a further 30 people injured. The victims were agricultural day labourers travelling from villages in the nearby Nile Delta region of Sharqiya to work on a farm when the crash occurred. The tragedy highlights the chronic dangers faced by Egypt's estimated 8 to 13 million informal workers, who routinely travel in dangerously overcrowded vehicles and lack basic wage and safety protections — among them over 1.3 million child labourers, according to official figures.