A woman and her five children have reportedly committed suicide in the northern coastal city of Alexandria, sending shockwaves across the nation and highlighting Egypt's intensifying economic crisis due to current events. The woman and the five children had not eaten for three days before ending their lives, according to her sixth child.
Several conflicting social, psychological and economic theories have surrounded the tragedy since it unfolded on 16 March, as regional geopolitical tensions, especially the US-Israel war on Iran , take their toll on the Egyptian economy and living conditions.
While it is not party to the war, Egypt is heavily impacted by it, particularly at the economic level, in ways that are opening the door for more suffering for tens of millions of people in a country that has hardly recovered from the effects the war in Gaza has had on its economy, economists say.
"The war has affected the national economy from the very beginning, highlighting its vulnerabilities to conditions outside national borders," said Amr Adly, a political economy professor at the American University in Cairo.
Speaking to The New Arab, he expressed fears that an extended war would have far more painful impacts on the Egyptian economy .
"Immediate effects on the war are felt by ordinary people, having weakened the purchasing power of the members of the public and raised inflation sharply in a country that heavily depends on fuel and food imports," Adly added.
The war-induced rise in global oil prices has forced the government to raise fuel prices by almost 30% earlier in March, a decision that is driving up prices of almost all commodities.
The fuel price rise was accompanied by a drop in the value of the Egyptian pound , a move fuelled by the flight of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assets , one that is further weakening the purchasing power of ordinary people and making some of the things they took for granted in the past out of reach. Growing toll The woman taking her life in Alexandria apparently had terminal cancer.
According to her sixth surviving son, they did not have money to buy food because she and her five children were cut off from financial support after her Jordanian husband had divorced her.
They ended their lives just as the Egyptian government was getting ready to apply a series of urgent austerity measures in its bid to cope with economic fallout from the Iran war and meet the conditions of an $8 billion International Monetary Fund loan hammered out in March 2024.
The measures, which took effect on 28 March, include the early closure of shopping malls and commercial outlets to reduce electricity consumption, additional cuts to fuel subsidies, reduced gas supplies to fertiliser plants, and the suspension of nonessential public investments.
These measures, economists said, are rooted in the toll the war and other geopolitical tensions are having on the national economy.
"The same toll makes it necessary for the authorities to formulate a comprehensive plan for dealing with related challenges," independent economist Khaled al-Shafie told TNA .
He called for solutions that do not ultimately negatively affect the living conditions of people with low or limited incomes.
"The government's success in dealing with the crisis is basically measured by its ability to protect ordinary people from its effects," al-Shafie added.
Other economists believe the toll the war has taken on the economy so far is only the tip of the iceberg, amid fears that its aftershocks could be devastating.
Remittances from Egyptian workers abroad, especially in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, are a crucial source of foreign-currency revenue for the national economy, amounting to the second-largest source after exports.
The remittances amounted to $25.6 billion in the first seven months of the current 2026/2027 fiscal year, which started in June last year.
However, Iranian attacks on GCC countries are posing threats to this revenue source, especially given their toll on Gulf economies and with foreign workers trying to return home for fear of the attacks.
The same economic toll on GCC economies, economists say, may also affect member states' ability to pump additional investment overseas, including in Egypt.
In recent years, Egypt has received tens of billions of dollars in investments from Gulf countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with Gulf sovereign wealth funds and investors racing against each other to make profitable acquisitions of state assets and sign investment deals in the populous Arab country. Fallout Effects from the Israeli-US war on Iran come just as the Egyptian economy tries to recuperate from the effects of Israel's war on Gaza, which undermined the Egyptian economy in serious terms, including by depriving the Arab country of a sizeable portion of Suez Canal revenues because of attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
The same effects highlight the painful trajectory the Egyptian economy has followed for almost a decade now: Every time it tries to recover, it gets knocked down again by yet another major blow.
Israel's war on Gaza erupted in October 2023, just as the economy was beginning to recover from COVID-19-related economic shocks.
COVID-19 struck here in February 2020, only when the economy started to recuperate from the effects of the bombing of a Russian passenger plane mid-air over the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, seconds after take-off in October 2015.
These repeated crises are affecting ordinary Egyptians in deep ways.
Nonetheless, a few of these people take their lives as economic conditions get more difficult.
Instead, ordinary Egyptians have to keep trying to match the little they have in their pockets and wallets to the rising prices of commodities.
Fifty-two-year-old civil servant and widow Hanan Hussein has seen her salary of 8,500 Egyptian pounds (roughly $161.5) dwarfed by commodity prices month after month, with her salary remaining the same or increasing meagrely even as prices surge.
"I have to stop buying one basic item after another with this continual rise in commodity prices," Hussein, a mother of two, told TNA .
She is especially frustrated by the continual rise in transport fares, which eat up a sizeable portion of her salary.
"I hope things will get better in the future, but I am not sure they ever will," Hussein said.