/ 21 July 2000

BUILDING COLLAPSES IN EGYPT

EIGHTEEN bodies, including those of five civil defence workers, have so far been pulled from the rubble of a collapsed clothing factory in Egypt’s port city of Alexandria. The factory caught alight on Wednesday night and firefighters extinguished the blaze seven hours later. The civil defence workers then went into the fire-gutted factory with their boss, fire chief General Mohammed Ragai, to inspect the building and it caved in, crushing them. On Thursday morning, the rescue workers pulled one of their colleagues, Hamid Yusef Mohammed, 55, out alive after he had been trapped for several hours. A group of children reportedly went into the burned-out factory to loot the premises, and they are thought to have been inside when it collapsed, but so far there has been no word on their fate. Police said the all the bodies retrieved so far have been those of adults.