Car Bomb Explosion in Cairo Kills at Least 20 People

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A midnight explosion following a car crash outside a hospital in central Cairo has left 20 people dead and 47 injured, the health and interior ministries said on Monday.

The intensity of the blast at the city’s main cancer hospital raised fears of an attack, but officials said it was the result of a car accident. Reuters video of the aftermath showed considerable damage to the front of the hospital, with an entrance wrecked and rubble strewn over the pavement. Victims’ belongings were scattered among the debris.

The blast occurred when a car driving against traffic on Cairo’s Nile corniche road collided with three other cars, the interior ministry said in a statement. It triggered a blaze that forced the partial evacuation of the National Cancer Institute, the health ministry said. One local resident, who gave her name as Salwa, said bodies had been fused together by the explosion and it was hard to believe it was the result of a car crash. “There was a sound of an extremely loud blast. It was no way two cars crashing.

The car must have been rigged with explosives,” she told Reuters Television. Another witness, who declined to give his name, said the car’s driver ran away before it exploded. Later in the morning, investigators scoured the scene amid a heavy police presence. (RTRS)

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