41 people, including 15 children, were killed in a fire that broke out in a Coptic church in Cairo
On Sunday, a fire blasted through a crowded Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt’s capital, swiftly filling it with dense black smoke and killing 41 attendees, including at least 15 children.
According to witnesses, several terrified congregants jumped from top floors of the Martyr Abu Sefein church to try to escape the strong flames. “Suffocation, suffocation, all of them dead,” claimed a horrified witness, Abu Bishoy, who only supplied a partial name.
Sixteen individuals were hurt, including four police officers who were helping with the rescue.
The cause of the fire at the church in Imbaba’s working-class district was not immediately known. According to a police statement, an initial inquiry pointed to an electrical short-circuit.
Weeping families waited outside the church for word on relatives who were inside the church and at local hospitals where the victims had been taken. Footage from the scene revealed charred furniture, including wooden tables and chairs, which spread online. Firefighters were seen extinguishing the fire while others transported victims to ambulances.
According to witnesses, there were many youngsters inside the four-story facility, which housed two day care centers.
“There are children; we didn’t know how to get to them,” Abu Bishoy explained. “And we have no idea whose son or daughter this is.” “Is it possible?”
According to Copts United, a Christian news website, a total of 15 youngsters were murdered in the fire.
According to an Associated Press report, 20 dead, including 10 children, were carried to the Imbaba public hospital. According to the report, three of the victims were siblings, twins aged five and a three-year-old. Abdul Masih Bakhit, the church bishop, was also among the deceased at the hospital mortuary.
The bodies of twenty-one people were transported to other hospitals.
According to Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church, among those dead were 5-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother, and an aunt.
According to witness Emad Hanna, a church worker was able to get several youngsters out of the church’s day care facility.
“When we got upstairs, we discovered that individuals had died. “And we started to notice from outside that the smoke was growing larger, and people were attempting to jump from the top story,” Hanna explained.
Youtube video thumbnail “We found the children,” he stated, “some dead, others living.”
The country’s health minister blamed the deaths on smoke and a stampede as people tried to flee the fire. It was one of Egypt’s worst fire tragedies in recent years.
The church is situated on a tiny street in one of Cairo’s most heavily inhabited areas. Sunday is the first working day of the week, and in the morning, traffic jams choke the streets of Imbama and adjacent districts.
Some families complained about delays in the arrival of ambulances and firefighters. “They arrived after people perished… “They arrived after the church went down,” yelled one woman outside the blazing church.
According to Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar, the first ambulance arrived at the scene two minutes after the fire was reported.
Officials said fifteen firefighting units were deployed to the scene to extinguish the fires, while ambulances transported patients to neighboring hospitals.
According to the president’s office, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to express his condolences. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, also expressed condolences to the Coptic Church’s leader.
“I am attentively monitoring the unfortunate accident’s developments,” el-Sissi posted on Facebook. “I authorized all responsible state agencies and organizations to immediately take all necessary measures to cope with this accident and its consequences.”
The health minister, Abdel-Ghafar, said in a statement that two of the injured had been discharged from a hospital, while the others were still being treated.
The Interior Ministry said the fire was reported at 9 a.m. local time, and first responders discovered it had started in an air conditioner on the building’s second story.
The ministry, which controls police and firefighters, blamed the incident on an electrical short-circuit, which caused massive amounts of smoke. Meanwhile, the country’s top prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, ordered an investigation and deployed a team of prosecutors to the church. According to him, the majority of victims died as a result of smoke inhalation.
By Sunday afternoon, emergency services reported that the fire had been extinguished, and the prime minister and other senior government officials had arrived to assess the scene. Premier Mustafa Madbouly stated that surviving victims and families of the deceased will be compensated, and that the government would restore the cathedral.
Caskets containing the dead were brought in ambulances for pre-burial prayers at two churches in the nearby Waraq district by late afternoon, while crying women lined their path. Hundreds of mourners gathered at the churches for the funerals before the bodies were taken to adjacent cemeteries for burial.
Egypt’s Christians make up about 10% of the country’s more than 103 million people and have long complained of discrimination from the Muslim majority.
The fire on Sunday was one of the biggest in recent years in Egypt, where safety standards and fire rules are inadequately followed. A fire at a textile factory outside Cairo in March of last year killed at least 20 people and injured 24 others.
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