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CAIRO : At least 22 people were killed and 36 injured on Saturday when dozens of homes in a northern Cairo shantytown were crushed by a massive rockslide, rescue officials said.
Disaster struck at 8:50 am (0650 GMT) when several huge boulders estimated by one official as each weighing "hundreds of tonnes" broke off Moqattam hill overlooking the capital's densely populated Manshiyet Nasser and struck the district of Isbat Bekhit.
The section of hill that broke away was estimated at 60 metres (yards) wide and 15 metres long.
According to rescue workers, at least 22 people were killed and 36 injured in the rockslide. The health ministry put the death toll at 20.
Lawmaker Haidar Bardadi told Egyptian television 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.
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.
Several witnesses said work had been taking place on the hill above the quarter for several weeks, and that the authorities had been warned about the dangers.
"There had already been some landslides, slightly hurting some people," said 42-year-old driver Abdel Latin Hossam, whose house was spared.
Shoemaker Mohamed Gaber, 25, said: "They (authorities) were doing some work up on the hill. I am sure this is what caused the rockslide."
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."
Labourer Sarghali Gharib, 24, told how he had lost eight members of his family -- five sisters, a sister-in-law and her two children. "It was horrible, like an earthquake. There had already been collapses, and the government did nothing to evacuate the district."
Police cordoned off the area and specialist dog handlers were deployed among the debris to try to locate survivors.
Rescue teams were forced to wait for five hours for cranes and special heavy lifting machinery to arrive which allowed them to move the rocks.
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.
- AFP /ls
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