Fourteen people have been killed and 25 injured after a public transport bus collided with a heavy transport truck on a desert highway in southwestern Egypt, medical and security sources said.

The accident late on Wednesday occurred on the Assuit-Kharga highway, around 400 km southwest of Cairo, in New Valley province, which shares a long border with neighbouring Libya, the sources said.

Seventeen ambulances were dispatched to the scene to ferry the injured to hospitals, state news agency MENA quoted New Valley governor Mohamed el Zamlout as saying.

It was not immediately clear how the accident occurred.

Reckless driving, lax traffic rules and poor road conditions cause many road crashes in Egypt.

Egypt's road accidents left 7,101 people dead in 2021, marking a 15.2 percent increase compared with 2020, the country's statistics agency CAPMAS said in a report last year.