Full Story coming today in The Daily Star Egypt. Photos by Frederick Deknatel.

A lot in the village of Temoua, in southern Giza. The main drag of Temoua St., a few blocks away, was lined with about a dozens of state security and police trucks on Saturday afternoon. They arrived sometime in the morning after a gas truck exploded here around 1.30 am. When the government arrived exactly wasn’t clear — on Temoua St. officers said they first arrived soon after the blast, though people in village said no one was there until 11. Three officers on Temoua St. did not know when the rubble would be cleared. Crowds of children in the neighborhood were standing around and playing around the blown-up truck site, kicking gas tanks. One kid picked up the truck’s muffler when I took a photo.

The truck was loaded with hundreds of gas tanks, and Adam Makary was talking to people there who said the gas was for residents to use. First one tank ignited, then another blew — 3 blasts, accorinding to local witnesses. Firas al-Atrqchi, the DSE’s editor, had taken video footage of the blasts from his Maadi apartment window, across the Nile and miles away, having heard the blasts from there. Perhaps I’ll try and post the clip.

The ruined, charred gas truck and tanks littered one end of the muddy lot in Temoua on Saturday afternoon. Across from the rubble, on the two far ends of the lot, two other trucks, also loaded with gas tanks, were parked, apparently moved in that day, according to residents. There is a storage facility near Temoua and other sources said the exploded truck had been parked overnight on its way there. Fortunately no one was hurt, although two similar explosions occurred elsewhere very recently, as our story reports, causing two deaths. 

So when will the rubble be moved? Late last August, my first week in Egypt, I was on a train to Alexandria four days after the major train crash just north of Cairo that killed 58 people, and we passed the wreckage, lying on the side of the tracks.