Rock slide death toll rises to 75

The number of people confirmed dead as a result of Saturday's rockslide in Cairo reached 75 and is feared likely to climb, six days after hundreds of tons of limestone came crashing down upon the Doweiqa neighbourhood, Egyptian security sources said.

On Saturday the 6th of September eight rocks, weighing between 100 and 500 tons, separated from the cliff face and crashed down on some 35 houses lying at the foot of Moqattam hill in a massive shanty town Manshiet Nasser on the edge of the Egyptian capital.

An unknown number of people, possibly in the hundreds, are still trapped under the debris.
Extreme poverty forced people to live in shanty towns instead of paying rents for the alternative dwellings that they could not afford. Around 1.3 million people live in the Moqattam area, mostly in extreme poverty.


Other recent Egyptian tragedies that have plagued Egypt under the current government:

July 16, 2008: Train plows into cars in Marsa Matrouh, killing 40 people and injuring 50
July 12, 2008: Three-storey building in Nile Delta collapses killing five people including 7-year-old twins
January 1, 2008: Bus plunges into Nile killing 19 people
24 December, 2007: Twelve-storey building collapses in Alexandria killing 35 people
April 18, 2007: Head-on collision between school bus and truck kills 18 students
August 20, 2006: Nile Delta train collision kills 57 people
February 3, 2006: More than 1,000 passengers die after Egyptian ferry sinks en route to Saudi Arabia
In 1994: 30 people were killed in a similar accident in the Manshiet Nasser area

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This is a compilation of articles found on earthtimes.org, AP and aljazeera.net