Bus driver shoots dead six near Cairo

A construction firm bus driver shot dead six workers and wounded six others as he sprayed passengers with gunfire near the Egyptian capital yesterday, a senior local official said.

"Six employees were killed and six others wounded before the other workers were able to overpower" the driver, provincial governor Fathi Saad said on public television.

An official with Egypt's security services earlier told AFP that 16 of the passengers were wounded.

The driver for the company Arab Contractors was taking 22 employees to their workplace in Giza when he stopped the bus at Meniel Shiha, 20 kilometres south of Cairo, and suddenly started firing, the official said.

The assailant was arrested but no immediate word emerged on his motives, although survivors were quoted as saying the driver had been suffering depression due to a job transfer.

Arab Contractors, one of Egypt's biggest building firms, said the incident took place about 200 metres from one of its sites.

"The passengers were shocked to see driver Mahmud Taha Ahmad Sueilem, 54, pull out an automatic weapon from under his seat and start firing indiscriminately on the passengers," it said in a statement.

The local governor said the violence was all the more shocking because Mr Sueilem had "a good reputation".