CAIRO: Four people were killed when a six-story building collapsed in Upper Egypt’s Asyut Thursday morning, while other three adjacent buildings are close to collapse, Youm7 reported.
The victims are the building owner’s wife, 46, two sons and six-year-old daughter, who died after being transported to Asyut Hospital. The building’s owner and other three neighbors were injured.
Collapse of the building caused cracks in adjacent buildings. Civil protection forces are still searching for more victims under the debris. The reasons behind the building collapse have yet to be announced.
On May 30, two people, including a toddler, were killed and two others injured when an unlicensed five-floor building collapsed in Asyut due to lack of construction standards.
Violations of building laws, lack of government oversight, corruption, poor maintenance and failing to follow global construction standards are among the reasons behind the recurrent building collapse phenomenon in Egypt, according to a survey conducted by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in June 2014.
In August, the government launched a campaign to evacuate residents in Giza’s blue-collar district of Imbaba; few hours after evacuating the residents, three houses collapsed.
One of the worst building collapses in the country occurred in July 2012 in the old neighborhood of al-Gumrok in Alexandria, when an 11-story building collapsed leaving more than 20 people dead. The building was originally six floors high but another five floors were added illegally.