Mahmoud Barakat
13 July 2018•Update: 13 July 2018
By Hussein Elkabany
CAIRO
At least 12 people were injured late Thursday when an explosion tore through a petrochemical warehouse near Cairo International Airport, according to military sources.
“High temperatures caused an explosion at a chemical warehouse owned by the Heliopolis Chemical Industries Company (CIC),” Egyptian army spokesman Tamer al-Rifai said in a Friday statement.
“Civil-defense teams quickly rushed to the scene and extinguished the blaze,” he said.
CIC is a subsidiary of Egypt’s Ministry of Military Production.
Basim Abdulkareem, a Civil Aviation Ministry spokesman, told Anadolu Agency late Thursday that the explosion that caused the fire had been heard many kilometers from the airport.
In a statement issued after the fire was put out, the ministry described air traffic at the airport as “normal”.
Mohamed Saeed Mahrous, chairman of the Egyptian Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation, however, said some flights were suspended for “security reasons”.
