Azhar road tunnel closed briefly due to water leakage

17 June 2014


The Azhar road tunnel, which connects downtown Cairo with Salah Salem boulevard, was closed on 7 June after partial flooding from a water leak, a security source told Al-Ahram Arabic website.

Vacuuming trucks were deployed to the tunnel to extract the water, the source said, adding the tunnel was reopened after an hour of closure.

The tunnel is the longest in Cairo, 2.6km long, and one of its most important, carrying thousands of cars every day.

In March, the head of the Azhar Tunnel Operation Authority, Ibrahim Samaha, announced his resignation, saying that there had been several technical issues in the tunnel and that requests to fix them had been ignored.

He also told the media that he couldn't afford to wait any longer; he feared a catastrophe in the tunnel and, as head of its authority, he would be blamed.