The Egyptian capital, Cairo, was plagued on Wednesday by a huge swarm of locusts, but officials claimed the situation was under control.
The locusts, numbering tens of thousands, moved across Cairo’s downtown area and continued heading south toward the agricultural areas of Helwan and Giza.
Last week, the insects arrived in the coastal city of Alexandria where government officials claimed damage was limited and contained.
A spokesperson for the emergency unit at the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry said that centres all over Cairo and south of the capital were equipped with insecticide capable of controlling the situation.
”We have many, many trucks to spray and kill the locusts, but people have to help us by not lighting up fires in tyres because that makes the locusts divide themselves into smaller groups,” said engineer Mohsen Abdo.
Last week, farmers near Alexandria started fires in the hope that the smoke would drive the insects away from their crops.
Abdo said ministry units were spraying the locusts at night when they are not flying and said that damage to agricultural products will be limited.
Last week, the Agriculture Ministry said it successfully fought off an invasion of its north-western coast by swarms of desert locusts by using a combination of pesticides.
The locusts were first spotted in Egypt’s western desert in late October after crossing into the country from Libya.
The insects have devoured millions of acres of cropland and millions of tons of grain in West Africa, which is suffering its worst locust invasion in more than a decade, according to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. — Sapa-DPA