CAIRO - Egypts main ports in Alexandria and the Red Sea reopened Monday, a day after authorities closed them due to high winds, low visibility and heavy rain, which killed at least 31 across the nation, officials said. "The death toll in bad weather-related accidents could rise, as rescue workers are still sifting through two collapsed buildings," a security official said. "The bodies of six workers, including a civil defence worker, were pulled from the debris of the six-storey textile factory that collapsed in the heavy rain on the previous day in Alexandria," the official said. He added that one worker died, among the ten injured in the accident, bringing the number of those killed to ten. Also in Alexandria, two small fishing boats sank when they were hit by storms. However, none of the fishermen on board were hurt. In the Nile Delta City of Tanta, a child was killed and nine people hurt when a five-storey residential building collapsed on Sunday, leaving one person trapped under the rubble. Building collapses are relatively frequent in Egypt, where construction guidelines are ignored and extra floors added without planning permission. "Twenty people were killed and more than 40 injured in road accidents on Sunday. They were blamed on poor visibility, due to heavy rain and sandstorms," security officials said. Meanwhile, maritime traffic on the Suez Canal was also restored, after the entry of southbound ships was barred on Saturday and Sunday and northbound traffic was limited "Everything is back to normal in the ten ports closed on Saturday," a maritime official said. A tugboat was trying to pull an Italian cargo ship to safety that was stranded off Egypt's northwestern coast, with 21 crew and 38 containers of toxic paint and resin, the Italian news agency Ansa reported. The ship had broken down off the coast of Marsa Matruh three days earlier. Vessel owner Stefano Messina told Ansa that a tugboat was on its way from Crete to assist the ship, which he said was carrying toxic materials, including paint and resin. "The cargo is safe and cannot cause an environmental catastrophe,” Messina was quoted as saying. Egyptian weather forecasters and meteorologists said the weather would improve for three days, as the speed of storms was expected to be lower than 30km per hour and the temperatures no less than 20 degrees Celsius.
