On Wednesday, Raheel Ahmed, the police spokesperson for the area said, “A total 22 bodies and six injured have been recovered from debris”.
Rescuers work at the site where a building collapsed in Karachi, Pakistan (Photo: IANS)
At least 22 people were killed and six others injured after a building collapsed in Karachi even as rescue teams raced against the clock to look for survivors.
The four-decade old building, which housed 40 apartments in its five floors, had collapsed on Sunday night in the city’s Lyari neighbourhood.
On Wednesday, Raheel Ahmed, the police spokesperson for the area said, “A total 22 bodies and six injured have been recovered from debris”.
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Ahmed further added that some of the bodies had been brought out on Wednesday.
Arshad Ali, spokesperson of the Edhi Foundation – one of the largest humanitarian non-profits in the country, told Efe that search was on for more people who could be trapped under the debris.
In a televised press conference, the Minister of Information for the Sindh province, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, said on Tuesday that authorities were investigating the incident as the building had already been declared dangerous and notices had been issued for vacating it.
In March, 24 people were killed due to the collapse of another building in Karachi, where authorities have declared around 150 structures, including both housing and commercial premises, as unsafe.
In 2015, a four-storey factory in Punjab province of Pakistan had collapsed that left 53 people dead.
Of the 167 people were trapped in the building, 109 rescued. Most of them had minor injuries, according to the rescuers.
At least 18 people were killed and over 70 others injured after a four-storey building of a factory collapsed in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore in November 2015.
In 2012, at least 45 people were killed and 103 injured in the eastern city of Lahore, after the collapse of an industrial plant.
Building collapses are relatively common in Pakistan, mainly due to the poor state of the structures, explosions in gas cylinders or installations and sometimes also due to heavy rains.
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