Cairo building collapse kills 15

Cairo: An apartment building collapsed on Tuesday in northern Cairo, leaving 15 people dead, medical officials said.

Rescue teams were searching for survivors and victims through the rubble of the eight-floor building in the crowded district of Al Matariya. Seven people were retrieved alive, the officials said.

“Fifteen people died, eight were injured and relatives say another seven are trapped under the rubble,” Cairo’s emergency services deputy director Jamal Al Jalawa said.

Initial investigations found that the landlord had illegally added two extra floors to the building.

The department’s chief, General Mamdouh Abdul Qader, said earlier that investigators were still investigating the cause of the collapse but that illegal construction work was suspected.

“We don’t yet know the cause of the accident but we have been told that two storeys were recently added totally illegally,” Abdul Qader said.

A witness on site said rescuers working to clear the debris were struggling to manoeuvre their equipment in a very narrow alleyway.

Relatives of the missing and onlookers were digging with bare hands in the rubble.

Mohammad Al Bishlawy, district prosecutor for eastern Cairo, said he has opened an inquiry and asked for the arrest of the building’s owner.

He blamed the accident on “renovation work in a second-floor apartment that has affected the structure of the building and the addition of two floors without permission”.

Other witnesses said that the collapse occurred following the explosion of a butane gas cylinder inside an apartment of the building.

The army sent rescue devices to the site to help remove the rubble, local media reported.

Neighbouring apartment blocks were evacuated for safety concerns, civil defence officials said.

Building collapses are common in Egypt due mainly to unlicensed building and the use of poor construction substances.

Thousands of tenements are believed to have been illegally constructed in Egypt during the unrest in the past three years that followed the 2011 ouster of long-time president Hosni Mubarak in a 2011 popular uprising.

— with inputs from AFP