After three days, search and rescue efforts officially end in Egypt's Alexandria building collapse

Search and rescue efforts ended at a late hour on Wednesday, three days after a 14-storey building collapsed in Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria that accounted for nearly half of similar incidents in the country in recent years.

Ten people, including a 13-year-old boy and a 22-year-old Sudanese national, lost their lives in the horrific incident and their bodies were pulled from the rubble by the rescuers, while four others have been injured as per the final official count, a health ministry source told The New Arab on Thursday.

The source added that the local prosecutor allowed distressed families of the victims to receive the bodies of their loved ones for burial from the morgues of nearby hospitals.

Preliminary investigations indicated that the collapse, which occurred on Monday morning, resulted from a "vertical split" in the structure of the building, located on the busy Khalil Hamada Street in the Montazah neighbourhood, reportedly as a result of "illegal construction work" on the last floor.

The floor had earlier received a demolition order from the local municipality but was reportedly ignored by the owner and the contractor, local news outlets reported.

Meanwhile, a local judge ordered both the owner of the building and the contractor, who carried out the construction work, to be remanded in custody for 15 days, pending further investigations into the charges against them.

Both men have been facing the changes of "involuntary manslaughter and the infliction of physical injury" as well as “illegal construction without a permit,” local news outlets reported.

About 16 flats hosted residents inside the collapsed building, and an unspecified number of units were mainly rented by holidaymakers, especially during the Eid al-Adha season that kicked off on Tuesday.

Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city, is known for being a preferred holiday destination for Egyptians during summer.

This year alone witnessed 22 incidents in Alexandria, killing at least 22 people, according to a report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the sister company of TNA.