Egyptian prime minister visits site of factory collapse July 22, 2000 - Web posted at: 6:48 PM EDT (2248 GMT)
CAIRO (Reuters) -- Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Obeid on Saturday visited the site of a collapsed factory in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria where 21 people lost their lives and more than 50 others were injured, security sources said. Obeid announced compensation for the families of victims of the disaster amounting to 5,000 pounds ($1,429) each.
The six-story clothes factory was gutted by fire and then collapsed late on Wednesday. Twelve firefighters, drawn from members of the police force in Egypt, were among those killed, sources said. Only one person was killed during the fire, while others died when the gutted shell of the factory collapsed. The cause of the fire is still not known.
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From http://news.24.com/News24
21/07/2000 20:22 - (SA) [21 July 2000]
18 bodies found under rubble
Alexandria, Egypt - Two more bodies were recovered on Friday from the rubble of an Egyptian clothing factory that collapsed following a fire in the city, bringing the death toll to 18, police said. The recovered bodies were those of two fire department sergeants, Ahmed Hilal and Osman Ismail, who were buried alive while inspecting the fire damage to the six-storey building in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, the police said.
Rescue workers were still trying to recover the bodies of two other sergeants, Subhi Yussef and Said Mahmud, they said. The other 16 dead included Alexandria's fire and disaster chief Mohammed Ragai and seven other rescue workers.
The police said earlier that a number of children were feared to have died when the building caved in on them after the fire had been put out on Wednesday evening. Witnesses said the children had entered the building to loot clothes and equipment, but a civil defence official denied they were looking for any children. Preliminary investigations said the fire broke out on Wednesday morning following an electrical short circuit in the factory, which lies in an industrial area of Egypt's Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. - Sapa-AFP
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20/07/2000 21:17 - (SA) [20 July 2000]
Factory collapse: 16 dead
Alexandria, Egypt - At least 16 people died, including the fire chief of this Mediterranean city, after a clothing factory caught fire and collapsed, police said on Thursday. Many others, including a group of children, were feared dead. Twenty-six people were injured, including three firefighters, and they were treated in two nearby hospitals, police said. Among those killed were Alexandria's fire and disaster chief, General Mohammed Ragai, and his deputy, General Ibrahim Abdel Qader, who also headed the explosives department. They were inspecting the inside of the building when it caved in after the blaze had been extinguished on Wednesday evening. During the course of the day, their bodies and those of a fire department sergeant, five civil defence workers and eight other adults were pulled from a pile of broken concrete beams and twisted steel reinforcement rods. The rubble was being cleared by dozens of rescue workers aided by earth-moving equipment as several ambulances stood by. One person died shortly after the blaze broke out on Wednesday morning at the six-story building in the city's Sidi Gaber neighbourhood, which was believed to have been started by an electrical short-circuit, police said. A civil defence worker, 55-year-old Hamid Yusef Mohammed, was rescued around dawn, and he was now recovering in the hospital with broken bones and bruises, police said. Walid al-Beheiry, an eyewitness, told AFP the firefighters and other civil defence teams arrived immediately on the scene, in the industrial zone in Egypt's second city, but it took them seven hours to extinguish the fire. "When the fire started all the factory workers, mainly young women, were evacuated," he said. "A bunch of young children got into the factory after the fire was out so they could take clothes and, in seconds, the whole six storeys collapsed, trapping them under the rubble along with the civil defence chief," he said. Police confirmed that a group of children were in the building when it collapsed and that they were still looking for their bodies. The government-run Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that a neighbouring factory was evacuated after cracks appeared in the wake of the incident and that two fire engines were crushed when the clothing factory collapsed. Al-Akhbar said the factory building had been destabilised by a previous fire around the beginning of this year and that proper renovation work had not been carried out. First estimates put the cost of the destruction at around $2.5 million, police said. A mass funeral for 12 of the victims was held on Thursday at a mosque in Alexandria, Egypt's second city. - Sapa-AFP � ���Back to top����������������� �2000 News24 - all rights reserved
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