NIGERIAN BUILDING COLLAPSE KILLS 20
July 19, 2006
LAGOS (Reuters) - Twenty
people were killed and many were trapped in the ruins of a four-storey building in Nigeria's largest city Lagos on Wednesday
after it collapsed overnight, the Red Cross and residents said.
"So far 50 people have been
rescued alive and 20 confirmed dead," Red Cross officer Umar Mairiga told Reuters. "We are still hopeful that more people
will be brought out alive as rescue work progresses."
Neighbours carried out survivors
and fought their way through hundreds of people milling around the scene to waiting ambulances because there were no stretchers.
The corpse of a new-born
baby was found by neighbours digging with sticks and shovels in the wrecked block of apartments and shops.
Heavy lifting equipment
belonging to a construction company cleared the mountain of rubble, mangled metal and furniture that littered the ground in
the Ebute-Metta district.
The number of people trapped
under the rubble was not known because there were people using a restaurant, a bar and shops on the ground floor when the
building caved in, Red Cross and neighbours said.
TRAPPED IN THE RUBBLE
"There are a lot of souls
in there. There are people trapped in there. They are calling with their phones," said a neighbor who gave her name as Sandra.
A woman who was rescued
from the wreckage on Wednesday with her child said her mother and younger sister were still in the rubble, neighbours said.
"Three of my friends lived
in the building, one of them has been rescued, but we have not seen the others," Sunday Okonkwo told Reuters.
Many of those trapped are
women and children because many adult residents had not returned from work when the building collapsed on Tuesday night, neighbours
said.
Dozens of people have died
in collapsed buildings in Africa's
most populous country in the past four years.
Many at the scene bemoaned
the government's slow response to the emergency, and stoned workers when they arrived, saying lives could have been saved
if they had arrived earlier.
