One person was killed and seven others injured in a bus crash on a motorway connecting southern Cairo and the seaport city of Suez on Friday, state news agency MENA reported.

Some of those wounded in the accident were in a critical condition.

Two other Egyptians were injured on Friday in a separate accident involving a private vehicle on a highway between Suez and the North Sinai town of Nuweiba.

Traffic accidents, which the government's census agency says claim 18 lives a day, are commonplace in Egypt due to badly maintained roads and railways and poorly enforced traffic laws.

Egyptians have often complained that successive governments have done little to uphold the minimum safety standards to prevent frequent accidents.

Late on Thursday, an elderly woman died and over two dozen people were injured when a microbus coming from Cairo and travelling at speed flipped over near the central governorate of Minya.

Last month, nineteen people were killed and 17 wounded when two minibuses plunged into a canal near Egypt's tourist city of Luxor.

Earlier in August, at least 44 people died and dozens were injured when two buses collided in the southern part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, near a popular Red Sea resort.