At least 41 people are dead in Egypt after a fire ripped through a packed church.
10 of the victims in Cairo are thought to be children, with those who watched recounting horrifying scenes of people jumping from upper floors in an effort to escape the thick black smoke.
Distraught witness Abu Bishoy said: ‘Suffocation, suffocation, all of them dead.
‘There are children we didn’t know how to get to them.
‘And we don’t know whose son this is, or whose daughter that is. Is this possible?’
The cause of the blaze, in the working class Imbaba district’s Abu Sefein church for Coptic Christians, was not immediately known.
But police said an initial investigation pointed to an electrical short-circuit.
The Interior Ministry explained that it received a report of the fire at 9am local time, and that they found the blaze broke out in an air conditioner in the building’s second floor.
The ministry, which oversees police and firefighters, also blamed an electrical short-circuit.
The incident is one of the country’s worst fire tragedies in recent years.
Sixteen people were injured, including four officers involved in rescue efforts.
Footage from the scene showed burnt furniture, including wooden tables and chairs as well as a charred smashed car window.
Firefighters battled the flames while others carried victims to ambulances.
Witnesses said there were many children inside the building when the fire broke out.
The country’s health minister blamed the deaths on smoke inhalation and a stampede as people attempted to flee fire.
Witness Emad Hanna said the church includes two places used as a day care facility for children, and that a church worker managed to get many children out.
‘We went upstairs and found people dead. And we started to see from outside that the smoke was getting bigger, and people want to jump from the upper floor’, he explained.
‘We went upstairs and found people dead.
‘And we started to see from outside that the smoke was getting bigger, and people want to jump from the upper floor… We found the children.’
The Coptic Church said the fire broke out while a service was under way.
The church is located in a narrow street in one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Cairo.
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President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi spoke by phone with the Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to offer his condolences, the president’s office said.
‘I am closely following the developments of the tragic accident,’ Mr El-Sissi wrote on Facebook.
‘I directed all concerned state agencies and institutions to take all necessary measures, and immediately to deal with this accident and its effects.’
Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghafar added earlier that two of the injured were discharged from a hospital while 12 others were still being treated.
Later on Sunday, emergency services said they managed to put out the blaze as the prime minister and other senior government officials arrived to inspect the site.
Egypt’s Christians account for some 10% of the nation’s more than 103 million people and have long complained of discrimination by the nation’s Muslim majority.
Safety standards and fire regulations are poorly enforced in Egypt.
In March last year, a blaze at a garment factory near Cairo killed at least 20 people and injured 24 more.
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