At least 24 dead in Cairo rockslide

CAIRO - At least 24 people were killed on Saturday when dozens of homes in a northern Cairo shantytown were crushed by a massive rockslide, rescue officials said.

Dozens of people were still believed trapped under the rubble and rescue operations continued into the evening, they said.

Disaster struck at 8:50 am (0650 GMT) when huge boulders estimated by one official as each weighing "hundreds of tonnes" broke off Moqattam hill and struck Isbat Bekhit in the densely populated Manshiyet Nasser neighbourhood.

The section of hill that broke away was estimated at 60 metres (yards) wide and 15 metres long.

According to rescue workers, at 24 people were killed and 36 injured.

But lawmaker Haidar Bardadi said he expected the toll to rise drastically, saying 35 homes had been crushed and between 150 and 200 people were trapped beneath the rubble.

Rescuers used their bare hands to shift debris in a desperate bid to search for victims while Police cordoned off the area and specialist dog handlers were deployed to try to locate survivors.

But rescue teams were forced to wait for five hours for cranes and special heavy lifting machinery to arrive before they could move the rocks.

"It was horrible, like an earthquake," said Sarghali Gharib, who lost eight members of his family in the rockslide -- five sisters, a sister-in-law and her two children.

The reason for the rockfall, which came at a time when many people were still at home resting during the first weekend of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, was not immediately known.

But witnesses said work had been taking place on the hill for several weeks, and that the authorities had been warned about the dangers.

"They (authorities) were doing some work up on the hill. I am sure this is what caused the rockslide," said shoemaker Mohamed Gaber.

Mohamed al-Sayyed, 80, too blamed the authorities. "They had said they would evacuate the entire neighbourhood in order to set up an industrial zone. We were happy about this... but they did no such thing."

Driver Abdel Latin Hossam said "there had already been some landslides, slightly hurting some people."

The interior ministry said in a statement that plans were underway to evacuate Isbat Bekhit in a month's time.

An AFP journalist at the scene said there was panic as residents of the poor neighbourhood searched frantically for missing friends and relatives.

"Two years ago the authorities warned us that it would fall on top of us, and today the drama has arrived," said Jamal Badr, 32, whose brick-built home was buried in the rockfall.

Most of the brick-built dwellings in the district have two floors and were put up without adhering to planning regulations and without construction permits.

The arid Moqattam hill is broken up by chalky rock slopes, and a number of unofficial housing areas are huddled at its base, along the length of a main road into the city.

Members of the Zabbalin community live there, Christian Copts who work mainly in collecting and sorting the rubbish created by a sprawling capital city that is home to about 20 million people.

Egypt has a poor track record of building safety often blamed on the flouting of construction regulations, particularly involving adding extra floors without permission.

In July five people were killed, including seven-year-old twins, when a three-storey building in the Nile Delta collapsed.

Last December 35 people were killed when a 12-storey building in Alexandria came down. Two years earlier, in the same city, the collapse of a six-storey building killed 19 people. Three extra floors had been added illegally.

Tougher legislation against construction firms that ignore the law was introduced in 1996 after a building in Cairo's residential suburb of Heliopolis caved in, killing 64 people.