Keystone-SDA
At least eight people were killed and nine injured Friday in the collapse of a residential building in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan. Other people are always buried under the rubble, according to the authorities.
(Keystone-ATS) The accident occurred shortly after 10:00 am (07:00 in Switzerland) in the poor district of Lyari, formerly prey to the violence of gangs and considered one of the most dangerous places in Pakistan.
This building had a hundred residents, a senior local police official, Arif Aziz told AFP.
It was “dilapidated”, AFP Saad Edhi told the EDHI Foundation, which participates in rescue operations alongside residents of this megalopolis, the population of which is assessed at more than 20 million souls.
The search for survivors continued late at night, however that relatives were gathered near the disaster site, awaiting news.
Photos of AFP show the completely destroyed building, while help and construction machinery search its ruins.
On these images, we can see bodies of victims evacuated from civilians while other residents try to recover their belongings from the debris.
“The building cracked”
Shankar Kamho, a resident of this building who was absent at the time of his collapse, assured that twenty families lived there.
“I had a call from my wife saying that the building was cracking and I told her to go out immediately,” said the 30 -year -old man said.
“She went to warn the neighbors but a woman said to her: ‘This building will last at least ten years.’ Despite everything, my wife took our daughter and came out. Twenty minutes later, the building collapsed. »»
The Sindh province of the Health Department announced that the record was eight dead and nine injured on Friday evening.
Saad Edhi, for his part, told AFP that there could be “at least eight to ten other people still stuck”.
“All my family is buried”
Declaction devices were fraying a passage to reach the scene and the police hunted the curious.
The six members of the family of Jumho Maheshwari, 70, were in his apartment on the ground floor when he went out to go to work.
“My whole family is buried and all I can do is prayed to find it alive,” he said.
Another resident, Maya Sham Jee, explained that her brother’s family was also under the rubble.
“We are helpless, we can just hope that the rescuers bring us our loved ones alive,” she said.
In June 2020, at least 18 people lost their lives when a 40 apartments building collapsed in the same area.
The collapses of roofs and buildings are frequent in Pakistan, a country with more than 240 million inhabitants, mainly due to the defaulting safety standards and the poor quality of building materials.
The city of Karachi is particularly known for its bad constructions, its illegal enlargements, its aging infrastructure, its overpopulation and its lax application of the regulations in terms of construction.
