Thirty-one people were killed and 23 injured when a massive rockslide hit a crowded Cairo shanty town yesterday, sending rocks and boulders crashing down on dozens of houses, security and medical sources said.

Tumbling rocks destroyed many buildings in the Manshiyet Nasser shanty town in eastern Cairo near the Moqattam plateau, its close-packed houses and narrow alleys huddled at the foot of cliffs beside a highway.

State news agency MENA said parts of the area were being evacuated because new cracks had been seen in the cliff face. Dozens of police and rescue workers were sent to the scene, backed up by fire engines, ambulances and sniffer dogs, but locals were enraged at what they saw as an inadequate government response to the disaster.

Hundreds of weeping, yelling residents gathered round the cordoned-off site, cursing local authorities and saying they had relatives and friends trapped beneath the rubble.

"You've just got your hands in your pockets, you're not doing anything!" one man yelled at police standing nearby.

"If it were the shura council (upper house of parliament), you'd have had the army in by now!" shouted another. One six-storey building was reduced to rubble by the landslide, witnesses said.

The shanty town of red brick houses and unpaved narrow alleys is famously overcrowded, with entire poor families sometimes crowded into a single room.

A woman in a white veil screamed "My children, my children! I didn't get anyone out, I need to see them, even if they're dead!"

Rescue efforts were moving slowly. MENA said the authorities had sent for heavy lifting equipment, and were evacuating parts of the area because new cracks had appeared in the cliff face.