Rescue efforts are still ongoing after a six-story residential building collapsed Monday night in Matariya, east of Cairo, killing 18, according to Cairo's General Administration for Civil Protection chief, Mahmoud Abdel Qader.
Rescue missions continued from late Monday to early Tuesday with as many as 12 ambulances transporting the victims to hospitals, said Egypt ambulance service chief Ahmed al-Ansary.
The cause of the collapse is still being determined, but many cases over the past few years have been blamed on delays in carrying out demolition orders issued for dilapidated structures.
The Egyptian capital's emergency services chief General Mamduh Abdelkader told AFP that investigators were still probing the cause of the collapse in the poor eastern neighborhood of Matariya, but that illegal construction work is suspected.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
