Soldiers from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team (3rd BCT), 1st Cavalry Division (1 CD) detonate a mine-clearing line charge during live-fire training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in October 2016. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army)
CAIRO – 16 May 2018: Ahmed Zaki Abdeen, chairperson of the New Administrative Capital Company for Urban Development, said that the New Administrative Capital’s Monday explosion was caused by war remnants.
In an interview with Egypt Today, Abdeen said that the 176,460-acre New Administrative Capital east of Cairo will be combed again to make sure it becomes free from war remnants and shooting ranges, noting that the area had been checked before the project started.
The combing of the city follows the required steps to ensure similar incidents do not occur in the future, Abdeen said, adding that the construction companies in the city had been instructed to suspend operations in case they find any unfamiliar objects and contact the security authorities to deal with it.
The city’s explosion caused the death of four employees, who were all from Sohag in Upper Egypt, according to Abdeen. In addition, a 58-year-old employee was injured.
Abdeen said that the New Administrative Capital Company is coordinating with the construction companies to provide life insurance to the latter’s employees who work inside the city. He said that his company has financially compensated the [families of] dead employees.
Army expert General Gamal Mazloum said that after the 1967 war between Egypt and Israel, the Israeli occupation forces launched air strikes on some regions inside Cairo, including Maadi, and other regions on Cairo’s borders.
Mazloum suggested that the region on which the New Administrative Capital has been constructed might had been among the regions attacked by Israel.
He added that perhaps Monday’s explosion in the New Administrative Capital was caused by a bomb that was dropped by an Israeli plane in the region in 1967 but did not detonate at the time.
The $45-billion New Administrative Capital constructed east of Cairo aims to be the new capital of Egypt in the future.
The new capital is planned to include 20 residential areas expected to accommodate 6.5 million people and a road network 650 km in length. The capital will include an international airport and an electric train to link it with the 10th of Ramadan and El-Salam cities.
It will feature 1,250 mosques and churches, a 5,000-seat conference center, nearly 2,000 schools and colleges, over 600 medical facilities, and a park that is projected to be the world’s largest.
It has been confirmed that the New Administrative Capital will include six international universities from the United States, Britain, Hungary, Canada, Sweden and France, said Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdul Ghaffar in early November 2017.
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