CAIRO –
Egypt was mourning a fire at a Coptic Orthodox church on Monday that killed 41 people, but many also raised questions about emergency response, fire safety codes and restrictions on building places of worship for the minority. Country Christian.
Residents of the neighborhood expressed shock at Sunday’s fire, one of the deadliest in Egypt in recent years, which killed 41 members of the congregation, including at least 15 children.
“The scene of the dead children still haunts me,” said Salah el-Sayed, a 43-year-old civil servant who lives next to the Martyr Abu Sefein church in the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba, and was one of the first to arrive. on the scene as thick smoke billowed from the building.
“Bodies of children scattered everywhere,” he said.
The fire broke out during Sunday morning services, starting on the second floor of the four-story building, which also housed a nursery school. Smoke quickly engulfed the upper floors.
Authorities attributed the fire to an electrical short in an air conditioning unit, but witnesses also pointed to a failure in a power generator the church used during regular blackouts. People also said ambulances were slow to arrive, which could have caused more deaths, though authorities said the first ambulance arrived minutes after the fire was reported.
Witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press recounted horrific scenes of people jumping from windows, a stampede in the main hall and church steps, and children lying motionless amid fires and burned furniture.
El-Sayed, who with others rushed to the church to rescue trapped worshipers and carried bodies to waiting ambulances, said the power was out for about half an hour that Sunday morning. He saw smoke coming out minutes after the power came back on.
Thick smoke made it difficult for them to enter, and some rescuers jumped from the roof of an adjacent building. Others stormed the front door of the church and climbed the stairs where the children were trapped on the fourth floor.
Ahmed Ibrahim, who lived nearby, said he saw a man trying to jump from a second-floor window. He and others tried to save the man’s life by spreading a blanket, but the man fell to the ground and died.
“Unfortunately, it was heavy,” Ibrahim said. “It was frustrating.”
Mohammed Yahia was among those who ran to the church and immediately went to the nursery.
Of the 20 children inside the nursery, he said all but five had died, speaking to a local television station from a hospital bed. Yahia carried five bodies, one by one, to ambulances, before falling and breaking her leg while she was helping an elderly person out of the building.
The dead children included brothers, 5-year-old twins and a 3-year-old boy. The five-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother and an aunt were also among the dead, according to Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church. Images of the dead children went viral on social media.
The church’s bishop, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was also among the dead.
The church is located on a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Cairo. It was an apartment building before it became a church like many others across the country, according to neighbors. It resembles other buildings in the area, recognizable only by a sign above the front door and an iron cross on the roof.
Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II said that Martyr Abu Sefein, like many others, is too small for the number of parishioners he serves. In televised remarks Monday night, he urged authorities to find solutions to build more churches.
Anba Angaelos, archbishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in London, blamed restrictions on church building that have forced Christians to convert residential buildings into places of worship.
The tragedy “is the direct result of a painful time when Christian communities were unable to build purpose-built churches and had to covertly use other buildings, which were not fit for purpose and lacked the features and escapes of health and necessary security,” he wrote. Sunday on Twitter.
Building churches has for decades been one of the most sensitive sectarian issues in Egypt, where 10% of the population of 103 million are Christians, but hardline Muslims adamantly oppose anything they see as undermining what they call the “Islamic character” of the country.
In the past, local authorities have often refused to grant building permits for new churches for fear of protests and riots by ultra-conservative Muslims. Amid such restrictions, Christians resorted to illegal construction or installation of churches in other buildings, as in the case of the martyr Abu Sefein.
Many similar churches lack licenses and do not comply with the safety code. In recent years, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has tried to regulate the construction of churches. In 2016, the government passed the country’s first law detailing the rules for building a church, though critics argued the legislation is in line with previous restrictions.
On Monday, a senior government official said authorities, in coordination with the Coptic Orthodox Church, would review all security measures in churches across the country, especially in Cairo’s slums. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Some relatives of victims and witnesses said ambulances and firefighters took too long to arrive, but Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said the first ambulance arrived at the scene two minutes after the fire was reported.
The street where the Martyr Abu Sefein church is located remained cordoned off on Monday as construction workers worked to clear debris.