Rescue teams are battling to free seven people trapped in the rubble of a Cairo apartment block after it collapsed, killing at least 15 others.

The seven-storey building came down in the poor eastern neighbourhood of Matariya.

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“Fifteen people died, eight were injured and relatives say another seven are trapped under the rubble,” Cairo’s emergency services deputy director Gamal al-Galawa said.

The city’s emergency services chief General Mamduh Abdelkader said earlier that investigators were still investigating the cause of the collapse but that illegal construction work was suspected.

“We don’t yet know the cause of the accident but we have been told that two storeys were recently added, totally illegally,” General Abdelkader said.

Deadly building collapses are not uncommon in Egypt, where safety and planning regulations are widely flouted.

Landlords often add extra floors to buildings whose foundations were not designed to support them.