Friday, December 04, 2015: Conflicting news hurl into motion as the police investigates the bombing of the restaurant in Cairo that killed 16 people and badly injured at least three. The investigators, returning from the blazes have ruled out any relation of the restaurant fire with any terrorist organizations, international or domestic.
The fire has been extinguished and dead bodies have been taken to the near-by district hospital for identification. The Director of the hospital, Ahmed Gamal, said that all the bodies had first degree to second degree burns and the reason of death for all sixteen had been asphyxiation, smoke inhalation.
The restaurant El Sayad, that also worked as a nightclub was located in the basement of the bazar offering only two escape routes that were insufficient at the time of the fire. All died because of the smoke inhalation and lack of escape routes.
Police have identified two possible causes of the fire as a conflict between the management of the club/restaurant and one of the employees, and a raging conflict between a customer and the management. In both cases, the police as of the remarks that the employee or the customer in a raging fit to avenge what he considered was a wrongdoing to him, came back some time after 6:30 AM with another group of people and firebombs. The fire has been instigated with the firebombs, the forensics have declared.
A witness, a worker at a neighboring pharmacy, saw two people leaving the building after throwing the firebombs. He says the time was a little after 6:30 AM, way past the time of the restaurant closing. However, the cleaning staff and the management usually leaves a little later. However, there are no customers at that time of the night.
The police has warded off the possibility of a terrorist attack at the restaurant. They are treating it as a crime rather than an act of terrorism. The two causes that the police has identified are: one of the employees was fired from the nightclub/restaurant by the management, and in a fit of anger he came back with another friend or group of friends and firebombs and set the place ablaze; or one of the customer was thrown off the premises, as El Sayad was also a nightclub, who came back to avenge the insult with another person or group of persons and set the club on fire.
In any case, the perpetrators are still at large and the police has set the perimeters and the search efforts have been initiated.
The fire incident left the neighborhood in terror as it was first declared as an act of terror. Egypt has been in an intense wave of terror since after the overthrowing of the first-ever democratically elected President Mohammad Morsi. The military coup of 2013, that replaced Morsi with the current Head of State Abdel Fattah Al, resulted in a wave of hatred and violence in the country. Dozens of terrorist attacks have been recorded that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people.
In a recent wave of terror, the radical group Islamic State has also been involved in a number of attacks. One of the affiliates of ISIS in the Sanai peninsula has conducted a number of terror attacks in the country. ISIS claimed the responsibility of the Russian jet crash over Sanai through the same affiliate. The place blew to pieces shortly after taking off from the recreational spot in Sharm al-Sheikh.
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