CAIRO –
A fire swept through a packed Coptic Orthodox church during morning services in Egypt’s capital on Sunday, quickly filling it with thick black smoke and killing 41 worshipers, including at least 10 children.
Several trapped worshipers jumped from the upper floors of the Martyr Abu Sefein church to try to escape the intense flames, witnesses said. “Asphyxiation, asphyxiation, all of them dead,” said a distraught witness, who gave only a partial name, Abu Bishoy.
Sixteen people were injured, including four policemen who participated in the rescue efforts.
The cause of the fire in the church in the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba was not immediately known. An initial investigation pointed to an electrical short, according to a police statement.
Crying families waited outside for news of relatives still inside the church and at nearby hospitals where the victims were taken. Images of the scene that circulated 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-story building, which had two nurseries, when the fire broke out.
“There are children, we didn’t know how to reach them,” Abu Bishoy said. “And we don’t know whose son this is, or whose daughter this is. Is this possible?”
A hospital document obtained by The Associated Press says 20 bodies, including 10 children, were taken to the Imbaba public hospital. Three were brothers, 5-year-old twins and a 3-year-old boy, she said. The church’s bishop, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was also among the dead in the hospital morgue.
Twenty-one bodies were transferred to other hospitals. It was not immediately known if there were any children among them.
Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church, told the AP that the 5-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother and an aunt were among the dead.
Witness Emad Hanna said that a church worker managed to get some children out of church nurseries.
“We went upstairs and found dead people. And we started to see from the outside that the smoke was getting bigger and people wanted to jump from the top floor,” Hanna said.
“We found the children,” some dead, some alive, he added.
The country’s health minister blamed smoke and a stampede as people tried to flee the fire for causing the deaths. It was one of the worst fire tragedies in Egypt in recent years.
The church is located on a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Cairo. Sunday is the first working day of the week and traffic jams clog the streets of Imbama and its surroundings in the morning.
Some relatives criticized what they said were delays in the arrival of ambulances and firefighters. “They came after people died. ΓǪ They came after the church burned down,” shouted a woman standing outside the burning church.
Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar responded that the first ambulance arrived at the scene two minutes after the fire was reported.
Fifteen firefighting vehicles were dispatched to the scene to douse the flames while ambulances transported victims to nearby hospitals, authorities said.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi spoke by phone with Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences, the president’s office said. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, also offered his condolences to the head of the Coptic Church.
“I am closely following the developments of the tragic accident,” el-Sissi wrote on Facebook. “I ordered all involved state agencies and institutions to take all necessary measures and immediately deal with this accident and its effects.”
Abdel-Ghafar, the health minister, said in a statement that two of the injured had been discharged from a hospital while the others were still being treated.
The Interior Ministry said it received a report of the fire at 9 am local time, and rescuers discovered that the fire had broken out in an air conditioner on the second floor of the building.
The ministry, which oversees police and fire services, blamed the fire on an electrical short circuit, which produced huge amounts of smoke. Meanwhile, the country’s chief prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, has ordered an investigation and a team of prosecutors has been sent to the church. He said most of the victims died from smoke inhalation.
On Sunday afternoon, emergency services said they had managed to put out the fire and the prime minister and other top government officials arrived to inspect the scene. Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly said that the surviving victims and the families of those killed would receive compensation payments and that the government would rebuild the church.
In the late afternoon, ambulances carried coffins containing the dead for pre-burial prayers at two churches in the nearby neighborhood of Waraq, as weeping women lined their path.
Egypt’s Christians make up about 10% of the country’s more than 103 million people and have long complained of discrimination by the country’s Muslim majority.
Sunday’s fire was one of the worst fire tragedies in recent years in Egypt, where safety regulations and fire regulations are poorly enforced. In March last year, a fire at a clothing factory near Cairo killed at least 20 people and injured 24.