Cairo: Government officials, leading a crackdown on squatters in a Nile Egyptian province, had to leave quickly for fear of mass stings by bees, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Squatters had set up 30 beehives on a state-owned area of 500 square metres in the southern Egyptian province of Sohag to discourage any bid by authorities to remove them, Al Youm Al Saba said.
When bulldozer drivers, backed by a police force, started this week to remove the unlawful encroachments, they were told to keep off the place of the beehives lest they should disturb the buzzy insects, according to the report.
Leading the crackdown were the minister of irrigation and governor of Sohag, who hurried to leave the site for fear of a potential bee attack, the paper said.
Egyptian authorities recently launched a nationwide campaign to remove encroachments along the banks of the Nile as part of a larger drive to re-establish what the government calls the “state prestige” after more than three years of unrest in the wake of the 2011 ouster of long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
