Egyptian police on Sunday moved shantytown residents from the site of a rock slide that killed at least 31 and left countless more buried, amid concerns that more rocks could tumble from the unstable cliffs overhead.
Police also forced journalists to leave the area. Heavy machinery had yet to tackle the massive slabs of rock, some the size of apartment buildings, that split away from the Muqattam cliffs early Saturday, crushing the shantytown below.
A security official said 31 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and 46 people had been treated at hospitals, but that many other people remained buried.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Massive boulders peeled away from a cliff and buried dozens of homes in an Egyptian shanty town Saturday, killing at least 18 people, authorities said. Rescuers were digging by hand to reach any survivors.
At least eight boulders, some the size of a small house, fell from the towering Muqattam cliffs outside Cairo and buried about 50 homes in the village of Manshiyet Nasr, one of many densely populated slums ringing Africa’s most populous city.
The official said 35 people were injured and, according to residents, there could be up to 500 people buried under the hundreds of tons of rock that fell. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
