Unusually heavy rains flooded streets in the Egyptian capital on Wednesday, creating enormous traffic jams and a slew of minor accidents, police said.
Traffic stood at a standstill for hours on a main road along the Nile River from the southern suburbs of Helwan and Maadi, where many foreigners live, to the city center.
With many bridges over the Nile also blocked, some motorists opted to take ferries from one bank to the other. Tunnels in parts of the city -- which numbers 14 million people including the suburbs -- were also flooded.
Rain usually falls two or three times a year, and downpours are rare, but it came in torrents overnight Tuesday.
Weather forecasters warned of flooding risks, especially in the Sinai desert peninsula and in southern Egypt, because of heavy rains washing down mountainsides, the government daily Al Ahram reported.
Stormy weather was expected to last two days and temperatures have already dropped by five to eight degrees Celsius from the seasonal average, with highs of 18 degrees (64 Fahrenheit) in Cairo and 23 degrees (73 Fahrenheit) in the southern city of Luxor.
There were no reports of delays or cancellations in flights in the nation's airports – CAIRO (AFP)
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