New bat attacks at abandoned houses in 3 Egyptian governorates

CAIRO – 29 April 2020: The governorates of Qalubiya, Minya and Sohag have seen groups of bats occupying abandoned houses and causing a state of panic among residents.

This prompted local units to intervene and carry out sterilization works at these houses to expel the bats.

This incident comes only a week after panic spread among residents of Al- Hazaneyah village in Shibin Al-Qanater, Al-Qalyubia Governorate [Egypt’s Delta], after a group of fruit bats attacked the villagers amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COBDI-19) pandemic.

When the local residents found a group of bats out of an abandoned under-construction building on Friday, they called the police and the officials of the city, while other residents set fire to coal to kill the bats by the heavy smoke.

“The building was owned by a deceased man but when his heirs wanted to sell it, they set fire to coal to kill the bats,” Sayed Gad, an eye-witness told “Al-Hekaya” talk show on MBC channel, adding “Some bats were killed but others escaped.”

"The bats moved from an old building that collapsed due to heavy rains in March to the under-construction building," he continued.

“Only 100 bats were killed, but there are large numbers that have not been killed due to the difficulty to control it [the situation] because there are no windows and doors that can be closed,” said Osama el-Desouky, head of Shibin Al-Qanatir Municipality.

Ali Younis, head of the Entomology Department at the Faculty of Science at Cairo University, said that the reason behind the spread of bats is that “bats are wild animals that live far from humans, so they prefer to live in abandoned gardens, caves, and houses. They also appear excessively when the weather is hot.”