CAIRO – A hot air balloon flying over Egypt’s ancient city of Luxor caught fire and crashed into a sugarcane field Tuesday, killing at least 18 foreign tourists, a security official said.
Sources at Sky Cruise, the Egyptian travel agency that organized the hot air balloon flight, said four Japanese were among the victims.
The Japanese travel agency JTB Corp. said the four Japanese were part of a tour group on a 10-day visit to Egypt that started Saturday.
JTB officials said only two Japanese had been confirmed dead as of Tuesday night Tokyo time.
According to the list of passengers on the air balloon kept by Sky Cruise, the four Japanese are Yasuhide and Asako Terada, and Kazuo and Harumi Tsuge. Both couples are from Tokyo and in their 60s. It was not immediately known who among the four were confirmed dead.
Other casualties included French, British, Belgian, Hungarian nationals and nine tourists from Hong Kong, Luxor Gov. Ezzat Saad told reporters.
Earlier reports said the four Japanese onboard were believed to have been JTB employees.
It was one of the worst accidents involving tourists in Egypt and likely to push the key tourism industry deeper into recession.
According to an Egyptian security official, the balloon was flying over Luxor carrying at least 20 tourists when it caught fire, triggering an explosion in its gas canister. It then plunged at least 300 meters to the ground.
It crashed outside the village of al-Dhabaa just west of Luxor, 510 km south of Cairo, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Three survivors of the crash — two British tourists and one Egyptian, apparently the pilot — were taken to a local hospital.
The dead tourists were scattered in the field around the remains of the balloon. An AP reporter at the crash site counted eight corpses as they were put into body bags and taken away. The security official said all 18 dead have been recovered.
The official said foul play has been ruled out. He also said initial reports of 19 dead were revised to 18 as confusion is common immediately after an accident.
In Hong Kong, a travel agency said nine of the tourists aboard the balloon were Hong Kong natives. It did not say whether all nine were killed..
In Britain, tour operator Thomas Cook confirmed that two British tourists were dead and two had been hospitalized.
“What happened in Luxor this morning is a terrible tragedy and the thoughts of everyone in Thomas Cook are with our guests, their family and friends,” said Peter Fankhauser, CEO of Thomas Cook UK & Continental Europe.
“We have a very experienced team in resort with the two guests in the local hospital, and we’re providing our full support to the family and friends of the deceased at this difficult time,” he said.
In Paris, a diplomatic official said French tourists were among those involved in the accident but would give no details on how many, or whether French citizens were among those killed.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to be publicly named according to government policy, the official said French authorities were working with their Egyptian counterparts to clarify what happened. French media reports said two French tourists were among the dead, but the official wouldn’t confirm that.
Hot air ballooning, usually at sunrise over the famed Karnak and Luxor temples as well as the Valley of the Kings, is a popular pastime for tourists visiting Luxor.
The site of the accident has seen past crashes. In 2009, 16 tourists were injured when their balloon struck a cellphone transmission tower. A year earlier, seven tourists were injured in a similar crash.
Egypt’s tourism industry has been decimated since the 18-day uprising in 2011 against autocrat leader Hosni Mubarak and the political turmoil that followed and continues to this day.
Luxor’s hotels are currently about 25 percent full in what is supposed to be the peak of the winter season.
Scared off by the political turmoil and tenuous security that has followed the uprising, the number of tourists coming to Egypt fell to 9.8 million in 2011 from 14.7 million the year before, and revenue plunged 30 percent to $8.8 billion.
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