News / India

Building collapse leaves 11 dead near India’s Mumbai

Tuesday, 04 August 2015 7:49 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 04 August 2015 7:49 AM ]

Indian bystanders watch as rescue officials use a bulldozer to remove the rubble of an apartment building in Thane on the outskirts of Mumbai after it collapsed in monsoon rain storms, July 29, 2015. (© AFP)

Nearly a dozen people have been killed and another has gone missing in a new building collapse near India’s western city of Mumbai.

A three-story building crumbled overnight at 2:00 a.m. local time (2030 GMT Monday) in the Naupada area of the city of Thane near Mumbai while families were sleeping inside, authorities told local media on Tuesday.

“Eleven bodies have been recovered and seven people pulled out alive. Another one person is missing,” Alok Avasthy, an official with India’s National Disaster Response Force, told reporters.

Rescuers are reportedly searching through the rubble for the missing individual.

“It was a 50-year-old structure that was in a dilapidated state and had been declared unsafe by the government two years back but people still lived there,” Avasthy said.

While some families had evacuated the building, a few others continued to stay there, not wanting to leave their home, according to reports.

Avasthy added, “We pulled a family of five to safety with the help of a sniffer dog who tells us that there is still some life in there.”

The accident is the latest in a long line of deadly building collapses recently, all of which have highlighted poor construction standards in India.

It comes just a week after nine people were killed when another old three-story building collapsed under heavy monsoon rains in the Mumbai suburb of Thakurli.

Millions in India live in rundown buildings, many of which cave in during the annual monsoon season.

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