An " accident " severe enough to be described in
detail by telegraph occurred at Cairo at four p.m. on Thursday. Two trains of ammunition, on two separate lines of rail, which had just come into Cairo, exploded, killing one officer and five men, and wounding some twenty more, principally natives.The station took fire, and ten days' provisions for the troops, with an enor- mous quantity of shells and other munitions—indeed, nearly the whole supply for the garrison—were destroyed.The scene was most awful, a conflagration which fires explosives like a battery being quite unprecedented. The loss is estimated at hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was at first thought that the explosion was accidental, the temperature of the station, with its iron roof, exceeding 106° Fahr. ; but by the latest accounts, incendiarism is suspected, as two trains broke into a blaze simultaneously, and two Arabs had been noticed trying to burn the rolling stock. There is no conclusive evidence as yet, but if incendiarism is at work, it would suggest that an attack upon the troops is being prepared. Asiatics rarely destroy for d. estruction's sake, and would not think such a loss even an inconvenience to the British. They must have done it to deprive the garrison of animnnition during an outbreak.
