Egypt Fire: Cairo church blaze kills 41 people including 15 children

A fire that ripped through a church in the Egyptian capital of Cairo during a Sunday morning service has killed 41 worshippers, including at least 15 children.

Several trapped congregants jumped from upper floors of the Coptic Orthodox church to try to escape the intense flames, witnesses said.

“Suffocation, suffocation, all of them dead,” distraught witness Abu Bishoy said.

Sixteen people were injured, including four policemen involved in the rescue effort.

The cause of the blaze at Martyr Abu Sefein church, in the working-class neighbourhood of Imbaba, was not immediately known.

However an initial investigation pointed to an electrical short-circuit, according to a police statement.

Weeping families waited outside for word about relatives who were inside the church and at nearby hospitals where the victims were taken.

Footage from the scene circulating online showed burned furniture, including wooden tables and chairs.

Firefighters were seen putting out the blaze while others carried victims to ambulances.

Witnesses said there were many children inside the four-storey building, which had two day-care facilities.

“There are children, we didn’t know how to get to them,” said Abu Bishoy. “And we don’t know whose son this is, or whose daughter that is. Is this possible?”

A total of 15 children were killed in the fire, according to Copts United, a news website focusing on Christian news.

The church bishop, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was also among the dead at the hospital morgue.

Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church, said five-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother and an aunt were among those killed.

Witness Emad Hanna said a church worker managed to get some children out of the church day care facilities.

“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 upper floor,” he said.

“We found the children,” some dead, and some alive, he added.

The country’s health minister blamed the smoke and a stampede as people attempted to flee the fire for causing the fatalities.

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The church is located in a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Cairo.

Sunday is the first working day of the week, and traffic jams clog the streets in Imbama and surrounding areas in the morning.

Some relatives criticised what they said were delays in the arrival of ambulances and firefighters. “They came after people died… They came after the church burned down,” shouted one woman standing outside the smouldering church.

Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar countered that the first ambulance arrived at the site two minutes after the fire was reported.

Fifteen firefighting vehicles were dispatched to the scene to put out the flames while ambulances ferried casualties to nearby hospitals, officials said.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi spoke by phone with Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences, the president’s office said.

“I am closely following the developments of the tragic accident,” el-Sissi wrote on Facebook. “I directed all concerned state agencies and institutions to take all necessary measures, and immediately to deal with this accident and its effects.”

Abdel-Ghafar, the health minister, said in a statement that two of the injured were discharged from a hospital while the others were still being treated.

The Interior Ministry said it received a report of the fire at 9am local time, and first responders found that the blaze had broken out in an air conditioner on the building’s second floor.

The ministry, which oversees police and firefighters, blamed an electrical short-circuit for the fire, which produced huge amounts of smoke.

The country’s chief prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, said most victims died of smoke inhalation.

By Sunday afternoon, emergency services said they managed to put out the blaze and the prime minister and other senior government officials arrived to inspect the site.

Premier Mustafa Madbouly said surviving victims and families of the dead would receive payments as compensation and that the government would rebuild the church.

By late afternoon, caskets carrying the dead were transferred in ambulances for pre-burial prayers at two churches in the nearby Waraq neighborhood, as weeping women lined their path.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the churches for the funerals, before taking the bodies for burial in nearby cemeteries.

Egypt’s Christians account for some 10% of the nation’s more than 103 million people.

Sunday’s blaze was one of the worst fire tragedies in recent years in Egypt, where safety standards and fire regulations are poorly enforced.

In March last year, a fire at a garment factory near Cairo killed at least 20 people and injured 24.