A five-storey building collapsed on Friday in the Cairo district of Shubra while it was undergoing restoration.
Security and civil defense forces and ambulances managed to pull four bodies out of the rubble and rescue three other injured people.
Four more people are believed to be under the rubble, according to preliminary investigations. The collapsed building has blocked the entrance to a neighboring building whose dwellers, fearing for their lives, jumped out of a balcony on its first floor.
Eye witnesses in Abdel Fattah Nasser Street said they heard parts of building number 13 falling with a bang while workers were restoring the building. Only three people managed to escape from the building before it collapsed completely, said eye witnesses.
Residents of neighboring buildings carried their children and rushed to the streets fearing their own buildings would fall down due to the impact of the collapse, witnesses added.
According to the criminal research team in charge, a lawyer has hired some workers to restore the first floor without first notifying the district council. Three families were inside the building when it collapsed.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
