CAIRO, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Six people, including a woman, were killed on Tuesday while illegally digging for ancient antiquities in southern Egypt's Qena province, a security source said.
The accident happened in Al-Araqqy village in northern Qena when two neighboring families tried to excavate antiquities beneath one of their houses, Mossad Abu Sikeen, chairman of the Qena security directorate told Xinhua, adding that an excavating hole collapsed which suffocated the victims.
The illegal digging for antiquities across Egypt, especially in the villages of the southern provinces, has more than doubled since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the sharp rise in unemployment has in large part fostered "the myth of easy wealth," Adel Abdel-Azeem, former assistant to the interior minister in the Upper Egypt region, told Xinhua in a previous interview.
Unfortunately, most of such excavations inside the old houses, deep and ill-considered, result in the collapse of homes, killing and wounding people, according to Abdel-Azeem. ■