By Cole Hill (staff@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Mar 04, 2013 12:55 PM EST

Less than one month before the Jewish holiday of Passover, Egypt is once again battling a plague of locusts. A swarm of roughly 30 million locusts have invaded the country, seizing control of farms and escalating national anxieties of famine and economic devastation. 

"Against our predictions, a swarm of locusts has reached the region south of Cairo. The swarm is comprised of 30 million individuals, and it is causing great damage to agriculture in the Giza area," announced Egyptian Minister of Agriculture Dr. Salag Abd Al Mamon in the Alwatan News

"Egyptian armed forces and the border guards are attempting to fight the swarm with the means at their disposal," Mamon explained.

Worrying about unintentional added destruction, Mamon advised residents against trying to fight back the massive swarms themselves. 

"I ask the families living in the locust-plagued areas not to burn tires. This does not chase away the locusts, but only causes damage and could ignite large scale fires that would cost in lives," said Mamon.

Mamon added that national weather forecasts estimate strong winds will soon drive the locusts toward the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia. In the mean time, Egypt will use crop dusters to attack the scourge, said Rajab Bachri, leader of Egypt's "War on Locusts" department in the ministry of agriculture. 

A report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations explained that the recent mass influx of locusts into Egypt was an "immature swarm" that actually began in November around Sudan.

"The locusts originated from breeding that has been in progress since November in southeast Egypt between Berenice and the Sudanese border," the U.N. said in a statement, according to The Daily Mail.

"As vegetation dried out, small groups and swarms of immature adults moved slowly north along the Red Sea coast, reaching Marsa Alam on 8 February, Hurghada on the 16th and Zafarana on the 26th."

Swarms of locusts aren't a rare sight this time of year in Egypt, according to Bachri. However, this particular case is "exceptionally large."

With the plague expected to move on soon, Israel is reportedly already bracing itself for the possibility of the swarm arriving there, according to Haaretz Daily News. The country's Agriculture Ministry created an emergency hotline Monday calling on citizens to report any locust sightings as a preventive measure. 

Of course, with Passover - the Jewish holiday celebrating the Jewish exodus from Egypt - just around the corner, we'd be remiss to not mention the obvious biblical parallels to Egypt's most recent plague of locusts. According to the ancient biblical story, God exacted a plague of locusts on Egypt as punishment for enslaving and hurting the Hebrews.

As the Christian Post noted, the Bible writes that Moses "stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night."

"By morning, the wind had brought the locusts; they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again"

One ton of locusts consumes the same amount of food in one day as 2,500 people, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

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