22 killed in Cairo landslide
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Twenty-two people were killed and 23 injured when a rockslide hit a shanty town in Cairo, security sources said.
Dozens of houses in the Manshiyet Nasser shanty town east of central Cairo were completely destroyed by boulders and rocks, the sources said.
Police have cordoned off the area.
Massive boulders, some 30 metres high, destroyed entire buildings.
One six-storey building was completely reduced to rubble by the impact of the landslide, witnesses said.
The shanty town is famously overcrowded, with entire families sometimes crowded into single rooms.
Witnesses described hundreds of weeping and screaming family members and neighbours gathered around the site of the destruction, cursing local authorities for what they considered a slow response, and saying they had relatives and friends trapped beneath the rubble.
Rescue efforts were proceeding slowly, and equipment for digging out survivors has not yet been deployed at the site.
Much of the digging is being done by relatives and neighbours searching for survivors or bodies under the piles of rock and debris.
- Reuters
