Blaze Rips through Regional Police HQ in Egypt, 45 Injured

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a police headquarters in Ismailia on October 2, 2023. (AFP)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a police headquarters in Ismailia on October 2, 2023. (AFP)
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Blaze Rips through Regional Police HQ in Egypt, 45 Injured

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a police headquarters in Ismailia on October 2, 2023. (AFP)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a police headquarters in Ismailia on October 2, 2023. (AFP)

A huge fire ripped through a regional police headquarters in the Egyptian city of Ismailia before dawn Monday, gutting the building and leaving at least 45 people injured.  

Authorities said they had launched a probe into the cause of the blaze that destroyed the Security Directorate building in the city 110 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Cairo.  

Several people could be seen trapped inside the burning building, screaming for help from the windows, in video footage shared on social media, and emergency crews were later seen deploying a crane to rescue them.

No fatalities have been reported from the at least eight-storey tall building that was fully staffed with police when it was engulfed by flames overnight.

Fifty ambulances rushed to the scene, joined by two army planes and military emergency services, according to the health ministry and local media.  

Crowds of onlookers flocked to the base of the building as the flames raged through it, sending black smoke billowing into the night sky.  

Twelve people were treated at the scene, the health ministry said, and 33 more were taken to hospitals in Ismailia and nearby Suez, according to the public prosecutor's office.  

Most suffered burns or smoke inhalation in the fire, first reports of which were received at 4:30 am (0130 GMT).  

By dawn, the building had been reduced to a blackened concrete shell as emergency services hosed it with water to prevent the blaze from flaring up again.  

Authorities have not said how many police or detainees were inside the building, and security forces later sealed off the area, AFP correspondents reported.  

Deadly blazes  

Interior Minister Mahmoud Tawfik ordered an investigation into the cause of the fire and a "structural safety review" for the building, his ministry said.  

On social media, Egyptians demanded information and accountability.  

Deadly fires are a common hazard in the north African country where fire codes are rarely enforced and emergency services are often slow to arrive.  

In August 2022, a fire blamed on a short circuit killed 41 worshippers in a Cairo Coptic church, prompting calls to improve infrastructure and response times.

Most suffocated while trying to flee the building, and others jumped out of windows to escape the blaze, as firefighters took over an hour to arrive through a maze of alleyways.

Monday's fire in Ismailia raged through one of dozens of new police headquarters that have been built or renovated across the country over the past decade.

In March 2021, at least 20 people died in a fire at a textile factory in the capital, after two hospital fires killed 14 people the previous year.



Israel Flattens Rafah Ruins; Gazans Fear Plan to Herd Them There 

Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
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Israel Flattens Rafah Ruins; Gazans Fear Plan to Herd Them There 

Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)

Israel's army is flattening the remaining ruins of the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, residents say, in what they fear is a part of a plan to herd the population into confinement in a giant camp on the barren ground.

No food or medical supplies have reached the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip in nearly two months, since Israel imposed what has since become its longest ever total blockade of the territory, following the collapse of a six-week ceasefire.

Israel relaunched its ground campaign in mid-March and has since seized swathes of land and ordered residents out of what it says are "buffer zones" around Gaza's edges, including all of Rafah which comprises around 20 percent of the Strip.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Saturday that the military was setting up a new "humanitarian zone" in Rafah, to which civilians would be moved after security checks to keep out Hamas fighters. Aid would be distributed by private companies.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the report and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Residents said massive explosions could now be heard unceasingly from the dead zone where Rafah had once stood as a city of 300,000 people.

"Explosions never stop, day and night, whenever the ground shakes, we know they are destroying more homes in Rafah. Rafah is gone," Tamer, a Gaza City man displaced in Deir Al-Balah, further north, told Reuters by text message.

He said he was getting phone calls from friends as far away as across the border in Egypt whose children were being kept awake by the explosions.

Abu Mohammed, another displaced man in Gaza, told Reuters by text: "We are terrified that they could force us into Rafah, which is going to be like a cage of a concentration camp, completely sealed off from the world."

Israel, which imposed its total blockade on Gaza on March 2, says enough supplies reached the territory in the previous six weeks of the truce that it does not believe the population is at risk. It says it says it cannot allow in food or medicine because Hamas fighters would exploit it.

United Nations agencies say Gazans are on the precipice of mass hunger and disease, with conditions now at their worst since the war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli communities.

Gaza health officials said on Monday at least 23 people had been killed in the latest Israeli strikes across the Strip.

At least 10, some of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia in the north and six were killed in an airstrike on a cafe in the south. Footage circulating on social media showed some victims critically injured as they sat around a table at the cafe.

EATING WEEDS AND TURTLES

Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to extend the ceasefire, during which Hamas released 38 hostages and Israel released hundreds of prisoners and detainees.

Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in Gaza, fewer than half of them believed to be alive. Hamas says it would free them only under a deal that ended the war; Israel says it will agree only to temporary pauses in fighting unless Hamas is completely disarmed, which the fighters reject.

In Doha, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday that efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza had made some progress.

On Friday, the World Food Program said it had run out of food stocks in Gaza after the longest closure the Gaza Strip had ever faced.

Some residents toured the streets looking for weeds that grow naturally on the ground, others picked up dry leaves from trees. Desperate enough, fishermen turned to catching turtles, skinning them and selling their meat.

"I went to the doctor the other day, and he said I had some stones in my kidney and I needed surgery that would cost me around $300. I told him I would rather not use painkiller and use the money to buy food for my children," one Gaza City woman told Reuters, asking not to be identified for fear of retribution.

"There is no meat, no cooking gas, no flour, and no life, this is Gaza in simple but painful terms."

The Gaza war started after Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza in the October, 2023 attacks, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's offensive on the enclave killed more than 51,400, according to Palestinian health officials.