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Last Updated: Oct 28th, 2008 - 17:57:18 |
CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll from a rockfall that sent boulders crashing down on dozens of houses in a crowded Cairo shanty town rose to 51 on Monday, with a number of people still missing, Egyptian security sources said.
Tumbling rocks crushed many buildings on Saturday in the Manshiyet Nasser neighborhood in eastern Cairo, its close-packed houses and narrow alleys huddled at the foot of steep cliffs beside a highway.
Security sources said the death toll climbed to 51 after recovery workers found at least 11 new bodies on Monday when they reached four homes that were previously inaccessible.
State news agency MENA, quoting the health ministry, put the confirmed toll lower, at 39. It said 57 people had been injured.
"There are still a number of houses under the rubble, and most likely there will be a number of victims found in these homes," a security official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
Roughly 10 to 15 people were still missing and believed buried, security sources said. Workers were expected to continue clearing rubble after they cut through a railway embankment on Sunday to bring in heavy earth-moving equipment.
Some of the rocks weigh more than 200 metric tons and it could take days to break them up and lift them out of the way.
The cliff, part of the Muqattam Hills that flank the old city of Cairo on the eastern side, fell on one of the poor working-class areas which have sprung up around Cairo as the city grew in the last few decades.
Rockfalls have been frequent in the area and the authorities had moved some people to new houses elsewhere.
Egyptian media said some people had refused to move on the grounds the alternative houses were too far away. But some residents said they did not believe the new houses existed or thought that one needed to pay a bribe to obtain one.
The disaster was the latest in a series of events that have damaged the reputation of an Egyptian government in office with few changes since 2004.
The fire brigade reacted slowly last month when a blaze broke out in the offices of the upper house of parliament. It burned for more than 12 hours and gutted the historic building.
A prominent member of the ruling party and one of Egypt's wealthiest businessman, Hesham Talaat Mustafa, was charged last month as an accessory to the killing of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in July.
In July, a parliamentarian from the ruling party was acquitted of manslaughter over the deaths of more than 1,000 ferry passengers who drowned in the Red Sea in 2006. The verdict has been widely criticized.
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