At least 16 people were injured on Wednesday when a large fire broke out at a convention hall in a northeastern Cairo neighbourhood, medical and security sources said.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, and the security sources said firefighters had not yet been able to extinguish the blaze.
An Interior Ministry security source cited by state news agency Mena said the fire had reached the main hall.
Health Ministry spokesman Dr Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said 16 people wounded in the fire were being treated at the scene or have been transported to hospital. Dark plumes of smoke rose above the building near a busy highway in the Nasr City district, and dozens of emergency vehicles were at the scene.
The convention hall regularly hosts conferences, expositions and concerts
Separately, an Egyptian court upheld a 10-year prison sentence on Wednesday imposed on two policemen for torturing an activist to death in 2010, judicial sources said.
Witnesses and rights groups said 28-year-old Khaled Said died after police beat him outside an Internet cafe in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
Activists launched an online campaign against police action that, alongside other strikes, meetings and rallies, morphed into nationwide marches calling for the dissolution of parliament and the disbanding of the state security agency.
The policemen were sentenced to seven years in prison in 2011, but a court cancelled the ruling after an appeal and ordered a retrial.
They were sentenced again to 10 years in March last year, an order that the cassation court finalised on Wednesday following an appeal.
Rights groups accused the police of widespread torture during Mubarak’s rule.
Said’s sister, Zahraa, said she was not satisfied with the sentence.
“When people are jailed for five or ten years for protesting and ten years for beating someone to death, this does not deserve to be called justice,” she told Reuters by phone.
A law banning protests without a police permit has seen scores of people arrested in recent months, including many leading lights of the 2011 protests against Mubarak.
Prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah was sentenced to five years in jail last month for violating the limits on protests.
