More than 40 people died in a fire at a Cairo Church during Sunday Mass

   A Coptic priest is pictured outside the Abu Sifin church in the Imbaba neighbourhood west of the Nile river. Photograph: KHALED  DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images

More than 40 people have died after a fire ripped through a Coptic Christian church in a working-class district of greater Cairo during Sunday mass, church officials said.

The blaze, blamed on an electrical fault, hit the Abu Sifin church located in the densely populated Imbaba neighbourhood west of the Nile river, part of Giza governorate.

Witnesses described how people rushed into the burning house of worship to rescue those trapped but were soon overwhelmed by the heat and the deadly smoke.

"Everyone was taking the children out of the building," Ahmed Reda Bayomi, who lives near the mosque, told AFP.

"But the fire kept getting bigger and you could only go in once or you'd suffocate."

The Egyptian Coptic Church and the Ministry of Health said 41 people died and 14 were injured in the fire, emergency services said.

On his Facebook page in the morning, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi wrote: "I have mobilised all state services to ensure that all steps are implemented."

In a later statement, he claimed that he had "offered his condolences by phone" to Coptic Pope Tawadros II, who has led the faith in Egypt since 2012.

According to a later statement by the interior ministry, "forensic evidence proved that the blaze originated in an air conditioner on the second floor of the church building."

A short circuit was what started the fire, according to Father Farid Fahmy of another adjacent church in Imbaba, who spoke to AFP.

He said that they were running a generator because the electricity was down. "There was an overload when the electricity came back on."

“I offer my sincere condolences to the families of the innocent victims that have passed on to be with their Lord in one of his houses of worship,” Mr Sisi said in a tweet.

Sisi, the first Egyptian president to attend the Coptic Christmas mass every year, recently appointed the first-ever Coptic judge to head the Constitutional Court.

“People were gathering on the third and fourth floors and we saw smoke rising from the second floor. People ran down the stairs and watched each other fall,” said Yasir Muneer, a worshiper at the mosque.

"Then we heard an explosion, sparks and fire from the window," he said, adding that he and his daughter were on the ground floor and were able to escape.

After prayers, according to Maher Murad, he left his sister at the church. Only 10 metres separated him from the church when he heard screaming and observed thick smoke, he claimed.

"I recognised my sister's body when the firemen put it out. All of the bodies are burned, and many of the victims were kids who were in the church's nursery.

Electrical fires of this nature occur frequently in Egypt; in late 2020, one at a hospital caring for Covid-19 patients resulted in at least seven fatalities and numerous injuries.

The second-largest city in Egypt, Giza, is located just across the Nile from Cairo. — Agency