Cairo - The number of people confirmed dead as a result of
Saturday's rockslide in Cairo reached 30 by Sunday, as frantic
efforts to rescue survivors and recover the dead continue.
With hundreds of people suspected to be still under the rubble,
the full extent of the tragedy has yet to become clear.
Hundreds of tons of limestone rock came crashing down on Saturday
morning upon the Doweiqa neighbourhood of a massive shanty town known
as Manshiet Nasser, on the edge of the Egyptian capital. Forty-seven
survivors are being treated for their injuries.
'I cannot believe my eyes,' said 58-year-old Nabaweiya Ahmad, who
came from her village in upper Egypt to spend a few days of the holy
month of Ramadan with her son and his family, to find them buried
under their house.
'Now I'm waiting for their bodies to come out, ' Ahmad told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa as she wept.
'I was sleeping when I felt something like an earthquake,' said
Aleya Taha, lying in Azhar university hospital. 'I then found myself
under debris. I fainted and found myself lying in the hospital.'
According to medical sources, most of the injured are women and
children.
Eight rocks, weighing between 100 to 500 tons, separated from the
cliff face and crashed down on some 35 houses that lie at the foot of
the Moqattam hill in Manshiet Nasser.
An unknown number of people, possibly in the hundreds, are still
trapped under the debris.
Army and firefighting crews with heavy-lifting equipment arrived
at the scene on Saturday, although the steep topography of the area
and narrow streets have hampered efforts to remove the debris.
As rescue efforts continued, the Deputy Governor for the Eastern
Cairo area, Mokhtar el-Hamalawi, said that a camp with 100 tents has
been set up at the el-Fostat area for people that have lost their
homes.
Residents are mostly concerned, however, with scrabbling through
the rubble in search of loved ones.
'Would anyone tell me where my house is?' shouts Ahmad Khalil as
he slaps his face in grief. 'I cannot even recognise my house to try
to save my family,' Khalil, who returned home the morning after the
tragedy, said.
Hundreds of security officers cordoned off the scene early on
Sunday in an attempt to evacuate other houses on the edge of the
town.
Residents' grief and anger has also turned against city
authorities for perceived neglect of basic safety and infrastructure
in the slum areas. Warnings about the instability of the rock face,
worsened by seepage of untreated sewage from houses without plumbing,
had been made repeatedly.
'Officials have for years overlooked the timebomb in this area.
However this might not be the last one in this area and it could
recur anytime soon,' geology professor Samir Abdel Tawab told al-
Masri al-Youm newspaper
Residents poured out their rage at Cairo governor Abdel Azim Wazir
and other officials who visited the scene.
'We have been complaining for a long time of the constant
rockslides, warning that it will cause a tragedy here,' local
resident Ali Mansour told dpa. 'Our calls have always fallen on deaf
ears. They (officials) only came after people are dead,' Mansour
said.
Governor Wazir, however, told reporters that several evacuation
orders had been issued more than a year ago but the residents refused
to leave the area.
Residents say they are very poor and cannot afford to live
elsewhere.
Some 1.3 million people live in the Moqattam area, mostly in
extreme poverty. Infrastructure and services are minimal, as housing
developed informally as rural populations moved to the city over
several decades.
In 1994, a similar accident occurred in the Manshiet Nasser area
when falling rock killed 30 people.
In 2007 the Egyptian government began a programme to upgrade and
develop the ring of shanty towns around Cairo in which millions of
Egyptians live.
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