Four workers have died after a fire engulfed a Telecom Egypt data center in Cairo, Egypt.

The fire, which happened yesterday (July 7), occurred at the 10-story Telecom Egypt building and lasted for hours.

In addition to the four people who died, 26 people have been injured.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, though the governor's office confirmed that it started on the seventh floor of the building in the Ramses area of Cairo.

The fire caused a temporary mobile network and Internet outage, with outage tracker NetBlocks reporting that connectivity was at 62 percent of its normal levels. It also impacted other services such as online payments and air traffic.

"A fire broke out this evening in one of the equipment rooms at the Ramses switchboard of the Telecom Egypt company, which led to a temporary disruption of telecommunications services," said the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) in a statement.

Telecom Egypt issued a statement on social media in memory of those who died and were injured during the fire, but didn't, however, provide any details on what caused the fire.

DCD has contacted Telecom Egypt for more information.

Update: Egyptian stock exchange EGX halted trading due to the fire, but announced today (Wednesday 9th) that trading has resumed.

The NTRA of Egypt posted yesterday (Tuesday 8th) that the fire has been controlled, with fixed Internet traffic fully transferred to the interchange center at Al-Rawda Central.

The NTRA also noted fixed internet services and mobile services from the three mobile companies were impacted due to the fire, with some interconnection circuits impacted. Those circuits are expected to be replaced, repaired, and/or rerouted by the end of today. Some landlines in the vicinity were also affected.

"Coordination is underway between the technical teams of Telecom Egypt and mobile companies to restore the interconnection circuits affected by the Ramses Central fire and replace them in other directions on the rest of Telecom Egypt's exchanges, and it is expected that the interconnection circuits will be restored within the next twenty-four hours," the authority said.

As reported by the National, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat, defended his ministry’s response to the Ramses Central telecoms hub fire during a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday.

During the inquiry, he said the fire suppression system in the building was overwhelmed by the intensity of the flames.

Telecoms Egypt posted a statement expressing its "deepest condolences" to the people who died in the fire, saying it was directing moral and financial support to the families of the deceased and those injured in the fire. Vodafone added its own condolences in the comments on Facebook.

DCD's sympathies go out to those impacted by the fire.