Cairo, March 4 (IANS): The Egyptian authorities said nine people were killed and eight others injured in a car crash on a desert highway linking the capital Cairo with the Suez Canal city of Ismailia on Saturday.

A passenger minibus collided with another vehicle on the Desert Cairo-Ismailia Highway in Ismailia Province, northeast of Cairo, Health Ministry's spokesman Khaled Megahed said in a statement, Xinhua reported.

A total of 14 ambulances rushed to the scene to carry victims to nearby hospitals, he added.

On Thursday, six people were killed and four others injured in a collision between a private car and a truck on a desert road in central province of Minya.

Also in Minya a deadly accident left 11 dead and 29 injured in February.

Egypt suffers a high rate of traffic accidents that kill thousands of people every year due to lack of highway monitoring systems, poor road maintenance and negligence of traffic rules.

In 2016, some 14,000 traffic accidents in Egypt killed more than 5,300 and injured over 18,600 others, according to a report from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.