At least 41 people were killed in a fire that broke out on Sunday during a mass in a Cairo church, according to Coptic church authorities. The Egyptian Coptic Church reported “41 dead and 14 injured” citing “sources within the Ministry of Health”, in a statement posted on its Facebook account.
This fire, the origin of which remains to be determined, occurred at the Abu Sifine church in the popular district of Imbaba, named after Saint Mercury of Caesarea, revered by the Copts, according to the authorities. “I mobilized all state services to ensure that all measures were taken,” President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi immediately reacted on his Facebook account. The prosecution announced that it had opened an investigation and sent a team to the site to establish the reasons for the start of the fire, while the Ministry of Health indicated that it had dispatched dozens of ambulances.
An anarchic city, prone to fires
The church is on the ground floor of a building, separated by just a few meters by a vis-à-vis, surmounted by a cross and also housing a social services centre. For Reda Ahmed, who lives near the church, “the neighbors organized themselves to pick up the children”. But “those who came back could not go back because the fire was too big”.
“The ambulances arrived after more than an hour (…) the fire trucks also while the barracks is less than five minutes away”, denounces Mina Masry, a resident. Another witness, Sayed Toufik, describes difficult scenes: “some threw themselves out of the windows to escape the fire, if you look at this car, you can see the traces of the impact left by a person who is now hospitalized, arm and broken backs”. A little further on, near a car on which broken glass, debris and ashes are piling up, Father Farid Fahmy, officiating in the neighboring church of Mar Yemina, affirms that “the fire started from a generator which got under way after a power outage and suffered an overload”.
In the sprawling megalopolis of Cairo, where millions of Egyptians live in informal settlements, accidental fires are not uncommon. More generally, Egypt, endowed with dilapidated and poorly maintained infrastructure, regularly experiences deadly fires in its various provinces. In March 2021, at least 20 people died in a fire at a textile factory in the eastern suburbs of Cairo. In 2020, two fires in hospitals claimed the lives of fourteen patients with Covid-19.