A speeding bus filled with tourists overturned and caught fire Thursday in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, killing at least nine and injuring 28, including two Canadians, officials say.

Hospital officials in Egypt confirmed to CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer that they treated a Canadian woman who was on the bus. The woman, believed to be in her 50s, was badly burned and had her left arm amputated.

"She has third-degree burns over much of her body and there were concerns over internal bleeding," Frayer told Canada AM Thursday.

Her husband was also injured, but his citizenship has not yet been confirmed.

A Suez doctor said the Canadians were a man and a woman. The man's injuries were said to be superficial.

The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that two Canadians were injured in the crash, but said to protect the privacy of the individuals involved, no further details would be released at this time.

However, a department spokesperson told CTV News that concerned family members can call its hotline at 1-800-387-3124 for more information.

Identities unknown

It is not yet known if any Canadians died in the accident.

Frayer said that the nationalities of the deceased are still not known.

"There is still a lot of question to the nationalities of the people killed, (as) they are saying that because of the severity of the flames, the remains are too difficult to identify," she said.

There were about 40 tourists on the bus -- mostly from Canada, Britain, Italy and Eastern Europe -- travelling from the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheik to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, said Dr. Said Issa, director of emergency services in the Sinai.

The bus was making a sharp turn when it hit something, believed to be a cement block, before flipping over three or four times and catching fire.

Frayer said passengers were leaping out of the windows of the bus before it even caught fire.

Moments later it exploded in a fireball, leaving little more than a burnt out shell of the vehicle.

An Italian woman told The Associated Press that most passengers were asleep at the time of the accident.

"When we woke up the bus was turning upside-down. After that, it was hell,'' said Diana Argentieri, a 27-year-old factory worker vacationing in Egypt with friends.

The accident occurred on a desert highway at Abu Zenima, an area about 70 kilometres southeast of the Suez Canal, Issa said.

The driver of the bus, Ali Haridi, told The Associated Press that he lost control of the bus on a sharp curve.

"I was surprised by the turn and I wasn't able to control the steering wheel, and I lost control and it rolled over,'' Haridi said as he was taken into the hospital at Suez with burns and cuts.

Argentieri said that many passengers were worried about the speed of the bus.

"The bus was going very fast and the road was in bad condition, we were immediately scared by the speed,'' she said.

After the accident, the bus rolled off the road and down an incline, she said. As Argentieri and her friend made for an exit "there was a person on the floor, lying still, and other people bleeding.''

She added that "We wanted to go back in to see if there was still somebody alive, but the bus was on fire.''

Argentieri said she and other passengers were forced to jump from a height of three or four metres to avoid the flames.

"We had no choice, so we plucked up our courage and jumped,'' she said. "Immediately after that the bus exploded.''

MENA, Egypt's state news agency, reports that the dead bodies were transferred to a local clinic, but wounded survivors were rushed back to a larger hospital in Sharm el-Sheik.

Many of the wounded were severely burned. A security official broke down the nationalities of those injured as:

• thirteen Russians
• four Britons
• two Canadians
• two Italians
• two Romanians
• one Ukrainian
• four Egyptians

The four locals included two police officers who were providing security on the bus.

Egyptian roads are the scene of frequent accidents -- at least 8,000 died in accidents in Egypt during 2006.

With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press