Three people were killed and around 100 were injured on Saturday after the seven-story headquarters of the Angolan police's criminal investigation department collapsed in Luanda, rescue workers said.
The three bodies were pulled from the rubble after hours of searching by teams of rescuers who were still struggling as night fell to access the worst-affected part of the building in which women detainees were trapped.
"We have recovered three bodies from the rubble and rescued 101 people," said Eugenio Laborinho, national commander of the protection services.
PHOTO: AFP
He said that those rescued from the rubble had been delivered to hospitals.
The wounded were mostly sent to the capital's main Sao Paolo hospital and to a military hospital where the authorities were not giving out details on the extent of their injuries.
The collapse happened at around daybreak when only a skeleton staff of 14 guards was on duty and all those who were injured were believed to be detainees who were being held while their cases are under investigation.
Laborinho said it was unclear how many were trapped.
"It will take us more than 48 or 72 hours until we reach everyone. This is what the engineers estimate," he said.
Cranes had been employed to shift some of the masonry while residents living nearby were told to evacuate their homes in case there was a further collapse.
Sniffer dogs have also been sent in to locate more survivors.
Local radio reported that the rescuers had struggled to reach the women's holding cell and were now looking to access by drilling through a neighboring building after it had been evacuated.
Police Commissioner Ambrosio de Lemos said that some of the survivors who had been located had been given emergency supplies before the rescuers began the task of trying to extricate them.
"We gave the victims supplies and cellphones to keep in touch. We know there's a woman with a baby," the commissioner said.
A reporter at the scene said that the cries of both male and female victims could be heard from within the rubble.
One of the victims who was rescued by the emergency services said he had heard a loud "cracking" noise from inside his cell during the night, shortly before the building collapsed.
"We heard something cracking. I looked out through the window and saw this pillar completely broken and then I saw one of the guards running away. We called for him to save us but he didn't come," Joao Salgueiro told state radio RNA. "Some time later we saw the building collapsing upon us."
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS