Nearly 1,000 angry Egyptians have disrupted the railway service between Cairo and Upper Egypt since Sunday to protest against installation of a mobile relay station, the National Railway Authority spokesman said on Monday, Xinhua reported.
Residents of el-Ayat village in Giza staged a sit-in on Sunday and blocked the railway, forcing 70 trains to stop operation so far, spokesman Mohammed Hegazi was quoted by state news agency MENA as saying.
The residents are protesting against the installation of a mobile relay station in the village, for fear of the radiation it may cause. Some residents shot gun fire in the air and cut the railway from Cairo to Upper Egypt Sunday afternoon, the official Al-Ahram newspaper reported.
The villagers insisted that the relay station should be removed to end their sit-in.
Hegazi said that some 54 trains working on the Cairo-Upper Egypt line were forced to stop as of Sunday afternoon. And another 16 trains which were supposed to operate on Monday on the same line were also at a standstill.
Around 240 foreign passengers have cancelled their train tickets on the Cairo-Upper Egypt sleeper train line, he said, noting that the price of the ticket amounts to around 65 U.S. dollars.