CAIRO (Reuters) - Swarms of pink locusts swept through the Egyptian capital on Wednesday, evoking the biblical description of the plagues which struck in the time of Moses.
The swarms of millions flew high above tall towers or swooped down onto treelined streets, where scared pedestrians stamped on them or ran for cover.
The flying insects arrived from neighboring Libya after devouring the countryside in central and western Africa in past months. But locust experts said they were unlikely to wreak similar havoc in Egypt, where agriculture is a cornerstone of the economy.
"This is really horrible," said one man as he ran past a building where locusts, some of them more than 3 inches (7.6 cm) long, smacked into office windows or landed on cars.
Some of the locusts, which arrived and disappeared in waves, settled on shrubs and trees. Authorities battled swarms at Cairo international airport, but flights were unaffected.
"They are driven by strong winds ... Under current climatic conditions they will not likely cause damage," Christian Pantenius, a locust expert with the United Nations (news - web sites) Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites) (FAO), told Reuters.
Pantenius said the locusts would not feed voraciously when the temperature was under 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Forecasts put Cairo's temperature for the coming days at below 25 degrees Celsius.
Pantenius said the locusts were arriving in medium-sized swarms. "They will very likely either die or migrate further to the south," he said, adding that the Saudi and Sudanese authorities had been alerted.
The locusts appeared to be passing through Egypt and did not pose a threat to agriculture, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoting Agriculture and Land Reclamation Minister Ahmed el-Laithi as telling a news conference.
Agriculture is a key sector of the Egyptian economy, employing millions of people in the North African country, which has a population of about 70 million.
The locust swarms have already traveled on the wind from North Africa to Cyprus. They can form swarms of tens of millions, occupying hundreds of square kilometers (miles).
In the Old Testament, locusts were the eighth of 10 plagues which God brought on the Egyptians before Pharaoh, their ruler, relented and let the enslaved children of Israel go. (Additional reporting by Esmat Salaheddin)
