A 12-story building collapsed Monday in Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing at least five people, including a young girl, according to police and witnesses.

Ambulances and civil defense rushed to the scene of the disaster, helping at getting out people from the ruins. A four year-old girl, two women and two men numbered between the victims of the collapse. Four other men had been injured according to police report.

State news agency MENA reported that rescue workers had managed to unearth one survivor, a woman from the ruins. All local hospitals had been alerted to prepare for any more injured people, said Alexandria Governor Adel Labib quoted by MENA.

According to one security source, 18 families were living in the building, but the authorities had no clear idea of the number of people who had been inside at the moment of the collapse.

The authorities could not say what the reason of the collapse was. The building had been built in 1978, had seven stories, but five additional ones were built in recent years, the police said, according to the Associated Press.

Buildings in Egypt seem to collapse either as a result of deterioration or constructors fail to respect the standards and regulations. In addition, some owners illegally add more stories to their buildings, which deteriorate their resistance.

This is not the first incident like this in Egypt. In October 2006, seven people were killed when a four-storey building collapsed in the Egyptian Delta city of Mansura.

In 2005, 16 people, including two children were killed and 17 injured when a story building collapsed in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city and its main seaport.

One of the worst collapses in Egypt happened in February 2002 in the northern Delta city of Damietta, when 27 people were killed. A similar incident happened in October, the same year, resulting in 11 dead people.