The death toll from a massive rock slide that buried a shanty town climbed to at least 47 on Monday, a security official said. The death toll was expected to climb sharply as recovery efforts hastened, officials said, according to the AP.
A total of 47 bodies had been pulled from the site of Saturday's disaster by midday Monday, said a security official. Workers at the scene had started to use heavy machinery like diggers to clear away rocks to recover hundreds more bodies believed buried below. Because of that, they expected the death toll to climb throughout Monday.
Earlier Monday, the Health Ministry had put the death toll first at 38, then at 43 as more bodies were recovered. Another 57 people were hurt with 21 still in hospitals, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak presided over a meeting of his government's ministers to discuss how to alleviate victims' suffering, the state news agency said.
Aboul-Ela Amin Mohammed, the head of the earthquake department at the National Research Institute for Astronomy and Geophysics, said the entire plateau remains in danger of further collapse. "It is not the first time or the last time," he told The Associated Press late Sunday. "The area is full of densely packed informal housing with no central sewer system. ... When the sewage touches the fragile surface of the limestone it changes its consistency into a flour-like paste."
