More than 10 people were killed and almost 100 are trapped after a three-storey school building collapsed in Nigeria’s commercial, Lagos, around 10am on Wednesday.
According to the sources, the school, which was on the top floor of the four-storey building in Ita Faji on Lagos Island, had more than 100 pupils, mostly pupils of Ohen Nursery and Primary School, were inside during the accident.
Thirty-seven people have been rescued from the building which collapsed in that area according to NEMA southwest region spokesman Ibrahimi Farinloye.
Emergency teams pulled several injured pupils from the rubble, but many worried parents at the scene were unable to find their children, while others went to a local hospital to look for theirs.
While awaiting official rescue efforts, many locals and passersby began their own attempts to free people from the debris, using their bare hands to shift slabs of concrete.
Rescue efforts are ongoing at the building, which included commercial shops at the base, homes at the top and a school on the second floor.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the school building, Twitters users have said that most buildings on Lagos Island are structurally weak.
Years ago, In September 2014, 116 people died when a six-storey building collapsed in Lagos during a service given by a celebrity televangelist and in 2016, more than 100 people died when the roof of a church in Uyo, in the south of Nigeria.
Workers have carried several dust-covered children, some moving and some still, to waiting ambulances. Nigeria’s president says that “it touches one to lose precious lives in any kind of mishap, particularly those so young and tender.”
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi
