By Sharif Paget
At least 18 people have died when a building collapsed in Cairo’s Matareya district said Dr. Hossam Abdelghafar, official spokesman of the Health Ministry.
Eight people are reported to be injured and others are still trapped under the rubble.
Total number of casualties remains unclear as emergency personnel continue to search for survivors from underneath the rubble said Dr. Abdelghafar.
The eight-story residential building collapsed in the middle of the night. The prosecution states that two storeys had been added illegally to the structure, making it unstable, Al-Ahram reported.
Two children were killed when two separate buildings collapsed in Sohag in September this year.
Unstable housing structures remain a problem for Egypt. A survey done by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) found that between July 2012 and June 2013 392 instances of building collapse resulting in 192 fatalities.
