A fire tore through a packed Coptic Orthodox church during morning services in Egypt’s capital on Sunday, quickly filling it with thick black smoke and killing 41 worshippers, including at least 10 children. Fourteen people were injured.
Several trapped congregants jumped from the upper floors of Martyr Abu Sefein Church to try to escape the intense flames, witnesses said. “Suffocation, suffocation, all dead,” said one dismayed witness, who gave only a partial name, Abu Bishoy.
The cause of the fire, which produced a large amount of smoke at the church in the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba, was not immediately known. An initial investigation pointed to an electrical short circuit, according to a police statement.
Images of the scene that circulated online showed burned furniture, including wooden tables and chairs. Firefighters were seen putting out the fire, while others were transporting the victims to ambulances. Weeping families waited outside for news from relatives still inside the church and at nearby hospitals where the victims were taken.
Witnesses said there were many children inside the four-story building when the fire broke out.
“There are children, we didn’t know how to get there,” said Abu Bishoy. “And we don’t know whose son this is, or whose daughter she is. Is that possible?”
A hospital document obtained by The Associated Press said the public hospital in Imbaba received 20 bodies, including 10 children. Three were siblings, five-year-old twins and a three-year-old boy, he said. The church’s bishop, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was also among those at the hospital morgue.
Twenty-one bodies were transferred to other hospitals. It was not immediately known if any children were among them.
Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church, told the AP that the five-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother and an aunt were among those killed. He said funerals for the dead would take place at two churches in the nearby neighborhood of Waraq.
The country’s health minister blamed smoke and a stampede as people tried to flee the fire for the deaths. It was one of the worst fire tragedies in Egypt in recent years.
People and police officers gather near the site of Sunday’s deadly fire. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)
Witness Emad Hanna said the church includes two places used as a daycare center for children and that a church worker managed to get some children out.
“We went upstairs and found people dead. And we started to see from outside that the smoke was getting bigger and people want to jump from the top floor,” Hanna said.
“We found the children,” he said, some dead, some alive.
The church is located on a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Cairo. Sunday is the first working day of the week and traffic jams clog the streets of Imbama and its environs in the morning.
Some family members criticized what they said were delays in the arrival of the ambulance and fire department. “They came after people died. They came after the church burned down,” shouted a woman standing outside the burning church.
Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar responded that the first ambulance arrived at the scene two minutes after the fire was reported.
Fifteen fire engines rushed to the scene to put out the flames while ambulances took the victims to nearby hospitals, authorities said.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spoke by phone with Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences, the president’s office said. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and other government officials also offered their condolences to the head of the Coptic church.
“I am closely following the development of the tragic accident,” El-Sisi wrote on Facebook. “I ordered all agencies and state institutions involved to take all necessary measures and to immediately deal with this accident and its effects.”
Smoke inhalation main cause of death, injuries
Burnt furniture, including wooden tables and chairs, and religious images are seen at the scene of a fire inside the Abu Sefein Coptic Church that killed at least 40 people and injured around 14 others, in the densely populated neighborhood of Imbaba, Cairo, Egypt, Sunday. , Aug. 14, 2022. The church said the fire occurred while a service was being held. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. An initial investigation pointed to an electrical short circuit, according to a police statement. (Tarek Wajeh/The Associated Press)
Abdel-Ghafar, the health minister, said in a statement that two of the injured were released from a hospital while 12 others were still being treated.
The Interior Ministry said it received a report of the fire at 9 a.m. local time and found that the fire started in an air conditioner on the second floor of the building.
The ministry, which oversees police and firefighters, blamed an electrical short circuit for the fire, which produced a large amount of smoke. Meanwhile, the country’s chief prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, ordered an investigation and a team of prosecutors was sent to the church.
Smoke inhalation was the leading cause of death and injury, the ministry said. The families of those who died will receive 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($6,674 Canadian), according to a cabinet statement.
Later on Sunday, emergency services said they managed to put out the fire and the prime minister and other senior government officials arrived to inspect the site. Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly said the surviving victims and the families of the dead would receive compensation payments and that the government would rebuild the church as soon as possible.
Egypt’s Christians make up about 10 percent of the country’s 90 million people and have long complained of discrimination by the country’s Muslim majority.
Sunday’s fire was one of the worst fire tragedies in recent years in Egypt, where safety rules and fire regulations are poorly enforced. In March last year, a fire at a clothing factory near Cairo killed at least 20 people and injured 24 others.