Deadly rockslide heightens Egyptians anger at govt

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
For years the shantytown grew in the shadow of a limestone cliff, its wooden shacks and shoddy brick apartments creeping up and spreading over the hill. The whole time, the limestone was cracking inside, slowly and invisibly, from the slum's own sewage. Last weekend, the cliff finally gave way. It rained giant boulders onto the poorest of Egypt's poor, killing 80 people in the Dweiqa slum, with whole families still believed buried under the rubble. And it left Egyptians furious at what they consider a corrupt, inept government that failed to protect them from a disaster experts had long predicted. "No one cares about us, they dump us here and forget about us," says Wael Abdel-Ghani, who lives with his wife and daughter in a one-bedroom brick hovel at the top of the cliff overlooking Dweiqa. People in the slum on the edge of the capital threw stones at officials at the disaster site this week, protesting that the government was not doing enough to help them. "Everyone knew this mountain is dangerous," says Abdel-Ghani. "But because it's us who lives here, they don't care."