Fifteen people
were confirmed dead and 22 injured on Saturday when a 30-metre-high rock
crashed down onto more than 30 flimsy homes in el-Doweiqa slum area in eastern
Cairo, dpa reported.
The death toll was expected to increase as witnesses told Deutcsche
Presse-Agentur dpa that nearly 500 people were still buried under the rubble of
the houses.
Security forces and firemen rushed to the shanty town, where 1.3 million live
in appalling conditions beneath a big, unstable rocky part of al-Moqattam hill.
Some of the buried had made contact by cell phone, but rescue efforts are slow,
the witnesses said. The rock fall happened as people were asleep near dawn.
Inhabitants told al-Jazeera satellite channel they had filed numerous complains
in the past to official bodies complaining of rock falls that destroyed walls
of their primitive houses.