A building collapsed at the early morning hours of Saturday in eastern Cairo’s Gesr al-Sweis area, killing at least eight people and injuring at least 29 others.
At Saturday dawn, Civil Protection Forces rescued a six-month-old girl from the ruins of the collapsed property, with the search for her parents still underway.
A security source said that Civil Protection Forces were making every effort to search for victims under the rubble, and had succeeded in retrieving five survivors from one family.
The source emphasized that the number of people who were present in the property during its collapse is not yet known, whether from residents or workers who were present in the workshop in the basement.
A security source said that eyewitnesses reported that they heard a sound of an explosion in a cheese factory at the bottom of the property, which caused strong tremors that the residents of the area felt and led to the collapse of the property.
The source said that the factory operates 24 hours and has about 40 workers.
The police placed a security cordon around the property to make way for the Civil Protection Forces and ambulances to recover the residents from the remnants of the collapsed property.
Videos were spread across social media showing people rummaging through the rubble after its fall and crying for help.
Residents said that the property was not fully residential and that the first two floors were a garment workshop. Relatives of the building’s residents said that six Sudanese workers at a clothes workshop were among the inhabitants of the building.
According to their statements the residents had noticed the property was beginning to lean slightly two days ago, causing some to leave the property and others remained behind out of no other options. Eyewitnesses in the area blamed the collapse of construction work done to expand the basement of the property, which damaged several columns and caused the building to lean.
Cairo Governor Khaled Abdel-Aal decided to form an engineering committee to examine all properties adjacent to the collapsed building and indicate the extent to which they were impacted by the collapse.
Abdel-Aal also visited al-Salam Hospital to personally check on condition of the injured survivors. He announced maximum emergency in the hospital and ordered the presence of all medical teams to provide for the injured.
He added that the rubble be cleared as soon as the Public Prosecution finalizes its investigations, and that continuous health care be provided to the survivors.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
