New Flooding in Egypt Threatens Historic Tombs

Fresh flooding swept through southern Egypt on Friday, drenching 70 additional villages, seeping water into some of the historic tombs of the pharaohs and collapsing 500 houses on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor.

And as survivors of a burning flood that surged from a fuel depot about 200 miles south of Cairo this week began burying their dead, the discovery of dozens of new corpses pushed the death toll from the bizarre tragedy to more than 500.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak toured flood-stricken areas throughout southern Egypt, visiting a tent city of citizens displaced from the town of Durunka, where heavy rainstorms this week triggered a fuel spill and fire that sent burning gasoline washing with floodwaters through hundreds of homes.

The new flooding, reported in early editions of today’s government press, raised alarms that Egypt’s most precious antiquity sites could be at risk from the heaviest rainstorms in half a century.

Luxor is home to the Valley of the Kings--the majestic canyon burial site of the greatest pharaohs of ancient Egypt--as well as the well-known Temple of Luxor and Temple of Karnak.

The semiofficial newspaper Al Ahram said floodwater had entered nearly all of the historic tombs, decorated with delicate wall paintings that have already been threatened by the thousands of tourists who descend into their chambers each week.

The extent of any flood damage was not known, but the well-known tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen, whose treasures have been on display around the world, was one of only four not penetrated by the floodwater, Al Ahram said.

There were no reports of flood damage on the opposite side of the Nile, where the famous temples lie. The Valley of the Kings lies in a deep, sloping canyon that is typical of the areas so far hardest hit by the fast-moving floods.

About 500 houses on the same side of the Nile at Luxor collapsed under the rush of the storm waters, the government press reported. That area of the Nile is full of mud-brick peasant homes, some of them designed as part of a model village created by the late architect Hassan Fathy, a celebrated proponent of natural building materials.

An estimated 70 other villages were also hit with flooding Friday in areas between Luxor and Asyut, the province in southern Egypt that until Friday had seen the bulk of the storm damage.

Mubarak toured several of the stricken villages in Asyut province and flew over devastated Durunka. The visit, a day after a similar tour by Prime Minister Atef Sedki, appeared intended to demonstrate the government’s concern over the tragedy, which struck in a region that is a stronghold of Muslim fundamentalists opposed to the government.

“They’ll build you houses, a new school and get you some clothes,” Mubarak told refugees from the Durunka flood as he toured their makeshift tent camp.

“We must build houses for the displaced people by any means possible. Start with the poor people. . . . Get in there and help,” he advised a large group of ministers who toured the flood areas with the president. “It’s a natural disaster. Does the state create disasters?”

Egyptian officials, stung when fundamentalist organizations responded more quickly than the government with tents and food for victims of a Cairo earthquake two years ago, have moved rapidly to pledge aid to victims of the flooding.

The provincial government of the stricken Asyut province announced that it will distribute $150 to the families of the dead, $60 to the injured and $7 to families who lost their homes.

Officials said they were taking steps to establish four tent camps on army land near Durunka and were also preparing to set up temporary shelters in the youth center in Asyut, the provincial capital about five miles west of Durunka.

“We’re taking count of the deaths, providing shelter, tents and blankets, and there will be in the future money given to these people,” said Mohammed Abdel Mohsen Saleh, a spokesman for the local governing council. “It seems also that the government has the intention of rebuilding this area, and to pay people damages either in cattle or goods.”

Several families said they will also seek to sue the public oil cooperative that operated the fuel-oil storage tanks whose exploded stores swept through the town of 22,000 at dawn on Wednesday.

No one so far said they had received any cash compensation from the government, though many said they were getting help from private citizens in Asyut and from mosques--a potential trouble sign for the government.

“The government is giving us no help yet. I assume they will. But in the mosque they are taking care of us, and on the road people are doing their duty toward us,” one woman who lost her home in the inferno said in an interview Thursday in Durunka.

Meanwhile, other aid is trickling in. Planes from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain filled with relief supplies arrived at a military field near Cairo, while a pair of Egyptian air force planes took off for Asyut on Friday with a load of food and blankets.

The Egyptian army said it had 500 beds and mattresses for the homeless and would also distribute about 55 pounds of flour, rice and sugar to each displaced family.

And President Clinton, in Des Moines on Thursday, said he has ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development to offer assistance to victims of the tragedy.

“The people of Egypt can be sure that their American friends will stand by them in coping with the aftermath of this terrible event,” Clinton said.

The process of identifying and burying the bodies has been a slow one, since many were burned beyond recognition and will likely be buried in mass graves.

Emergency workers were still uncovering new bodies in the rubble, and it appeared that the final death toll will exceed the 500 dead discovered so far.

Adding to the toll were the discovery of 21 bodies in a mosque, where people had hidden to take shelter from the rushing floodwaters, and a family of 15 that climbed to the fifth floor of a building adjacent to their house to escape the burning waters, only to die of smoke inhalation.

About 80 of the dead were killed in flash flooding that struck six other villages in southern Egypt and took out a large chunk of the main desert highway that connects northern and southern Egypt.