Several feared trapped as six-storey building collapses in Kenya

Several people were injured and an unknown number are feared trapped after a six-storey residential building collapsed in an eastern suburb of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Friday.



“We do not have a figure yet,” Peter Abwao, Kenya Red Cross Communications Manager, said, adding that teams were still on the ground combing through the rubble.



No fatalities have been reported so far.



Television and amateur footage on social media have shown civilians carrying injured people away from the building, which now looks like a heap of flattened concrete layers.



Robert Mbuvi, a resident of Tassia Estate where the incident took place, said that the building had collapsed early this morning.



He said he had counted about “10 casualties in critical condition dislodged from the ruins and rushed to a hospital.”



The incident has sparked fresh outrage over shoddy construction in the city’s poorer suburbs.



In September, eight school pupils were killed and 57 injured after a classroom collapsed.









Prominent Kenyan blogger and activist Robert Alai said that inferior construction prevalent in Nairobi is the result of “impunity among landlords – many of them politically well-connected – who flout building regulations.”



Alai says residents of the collapsed building had recently expressed concerns about it but the relevant authorities had turned a deaf ear.



“Residents flagged the building three or four months ago when it started showing cracks, and nobody took note,” he said.



(DPA/NAN)

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