Egypt: Man kills wife and baby then jumps to his own death

An Egyptian man has killed his wife and nine-month old baby before killing himself, according to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan.

According to the newspaper the building contractor strangled his 35-year-old wife to death using a scarf, threw the baby off the fourth floor of their apartment building and then jumped off the balcony himself.

Just before she was killed his wife called her mother and said that her husband was in 31 million Egyptian pounds ($2 million) worth of debt.

“I want to commit suicide but I’m afraid to leave you facing trouble after me,” her mother told Al-Watan newspaper that her daughter’s husband had told her.

It is the latest in a sting of incidents in Egypt where men have killed their wives or partners and then killed or attempted to kill themselves.

Last week surveillance cameras captured a young Egyptian man shooting his fiancée and then turning the gun on himself.

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According to local media the couple were engaged but she later decided to break off the relationship.

Suicide rates have risen sharply in the last two years as the cost of living and the unemployment rate have soared under the government’s austerity programme rolled out under the terms of a 2016 IMF loan.

According to the Egyptian National Centre for Criminal and Social Studies, 25 per cent of Egyptians suffer from mental illness due to the rate of poverty; 60 per cent of them have considered suicide.

Suicide and mental health public services in Egypt are underfunded.

Last year Egyptian activists launched the Arabic hashtag “suicide has spread because of” and posted top reasons why more people are killing themselves in Egypt.

Top of the list was the regime’s oppression on members of the opposition. Other factors were economic and social deterioration, poverty, corruption and job insecurity.

In December engineering student Nader Mohamed, 20, threw himself off the top of Cairo Tower after telling a friend he was going through a psychological crisis.