CAIRO: A person was killed after a 13-storey building collapsed in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday, reported German news agency (dpa).
The body was recovered Monday evening, hours after the collapse, while rescuers continued to remove debris and search for victims.
Alexandria governor Mohammed al-Sherif said four people were injured.
The building suffered a “vertical split” before it collapsed, the governor said. The last floor was built without approval and there was an order to remove it.
Most apartments were used as summer vacation accommodation, al-Sherif said, implying the building was not fully occupied.
The collapse took place ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival, a major holiday in Muslim-dominated Egypt, which will begin on Wednesday.
Deadly collapses of residential buildings are not uncommon in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country of more than 100 million.
Poor maintenance of ageing buildings and violations of construction regulations are often blamed. – BERNAMA-dpa
