Four dead in Cairo building collapse

Four-storey structure comes down in Hadayek Al Qubba, the seventh such incident in two months

Four people died and three others were injured after a building in central Cairo collapsed, the city’s municipal government said on Wednesday.

Efforts to find for more victims in the rubble were continuing after the four-storey structure came down in Hadayek Al Qubba, where another building collapsed in July, killing 12.

It was the seventh building to collapse in Cairo in the last two months, data from Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics showed. Since the start of the year, 18 buildings have collapsed in Egypt, killing 30 people.

An Egyptian Red Crescent team was sent to the site to provide aid to municipal workers, the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity said.

Agents from Egypt's Public Prosecution Office visited the site on Wednesday before the rubble was cleared. The prosecutor-general ordered an investigation to determine the cause of the collapse.

Earlier, an engineering committee was formed to determine whether surrounding buildings were at risk, Cairo’s governor Khaled Abdel Aal said.

The three who were injured were taken to the nearby El Demerdash Hospital along with the four that perished, the municipal statement said.

The Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity said it would give 60,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,000) in compensation to the families of those that died.

Minister Nevine El-Kabbag offered her condolences to those who lost friends and family members in the collapse.

Building collapses are common in Cairo’s lower-income neighbourhoods where unregulated, shoddy construction is rampant despite government efforts to curb it.

A 2017 census showed about 98,000 buildings were at risk of caving in.