CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian officials said Tuesday a fire that engulfed a main telecom company building in downtown Cairo the day before left four people dead and over two dozen injured.
The four were Telecom Egypt employees who had been inside the building, the workers’ union of the company said in a statement.
Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the health ministry spokesperson, told The Associated Press over the phone the number of the injured increased from 14 to 26, including those who suffered from smoke suffocation. All were hospitalized and some have been discharged, he said.
The fire began in one of the halls on the floor housing telecom operators and spread to other floors due to its intensity, according to the Communications Ministry.
The blaze, which broke out at the landmark 10-story Telecom Egypt building, prompted a temporary outage of internet and mobile phone services. NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, wrote Monday on X that network data show national connectivity was at 62% of ordinary levels.
The outage also disrupted air traffic, but the civil aviation ministry said early Tuesday all halted flights have taken off.
The Egyptian Stock Exchange halted trading on Tuesday due to widespread disruption impacting the efficiency of the trading system.
Amr Talaat, minister of communications and information technology, said in a statement Tuesday morning that all communications services will gradually be fully restored within 24 hours. He said that all services were transferred to more than one switchboard to operate as an alternative network
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