Collapsed Cairo High-Rise Traps 15

A 12-story building collapsed in a Cairo suburb Monday night after a fire broke out on a ground floor store, injuring 33 people and trapping 15 others, officials said.

Most of the people who were trapped in the building are policemen and firefighters dispatched to put out the blaze and evacuate the area, police officials said. Hundreds of people lived in the building but most had evacuated by the time it collapsed, avoiding a disaster.

Egypt's Health Minister Mohammed Awad Tag Eddin said 33 injured people were taken to nearby hospitals.

A police officer at the scene, briefing reporters about three hours after the collapse, said 16 people were trapped — 14 of them policemen and firefighters and two civilians. The unnamed officer identified the civilians as workers in the store where the fire started.

Rescuers pulled a fire brigade officer alive from the rubble, his face covered with dust. He was taken to an ambulance amid cries of "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great, and cheers from neighborhood residents.

Other officials put the number of those still trapped at between eight and 18.

It was not clear whether the discrepancy in figures resulted from survivors being rescued.

Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the fire broke out on the ground floor. At first, they said the blaze started at an Egyptian fast-food restaurant but later said that the fire began at an adjacent home appliances store.

The 12-story building collapsed accordion-style, with the top floor smashing down until it was level with the second and third floors of neighboring buildings. Several satellite dishes rested intact on the roof. A panda toy, slippers, bags and a brass pot were scattered in the debris.

Police sealed off the area to keep residents away and to prevent any disruption of the rescue effort. Rescue officials evacuated two adjacent buildings that were damaged by the collapse as firemen and policemen worked under floodlights looking for survivors or bodies.

Mahmoud el-Sayyed, a 21-year-old waiter in a nearby restaurant, helped rescue two firefighters as smoke engulfed the neighborhood.

"Their lower parts were trapped. I held the head of one of them" as rescuers removed concrete slabs by hand. "After about two hours, we managed to pull the man out," he told The Associated Press.

After several hours of the delicate clearing of rubble by hand in search of survivors, bulldozers were brought in early Tuesday to help the rescuers.

The building is located on the main commercial Abbas Al-Aqqad Street in Nasr City, an eastern suburb of the Egyptian capital near the airport. The area is home to many high-rise residential buildings and shopping centers.

Building collapses are common in Egypt and are often caused by shoddy construction or the unauthorized building of extra stories.

The building which collapsed Monday was built in 1981. The owner illegally added four more floors 12 years ago, police said. An order from the city to tear down the extra floors two years ago was never executed.

Six days ago, tenants complained to police, concerned that renovation in the ground floor store could damage the building's foundations.

The last such incident was May 4, when a seven-story apartment block in Cairo collapsed, killing at least seven people.