A five-story residential block collapsed in Mumbai at daybreak yesterday, killing at least five people and leaving dozens feared trapped inside after the latest building disaster to hit India’s financial capital.
Rescue workers scrambled to find survivors amid the debris of the flattened block in the east of the city, which is owned by the city’s civic administrative body, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.
“My heart is thumping with fear. I’m just hoping,” said tearful housewife Shanta Makwana, whose daughter and grandchildren were trapped inside the building in which she used to live.
Several diggers were pressed into action to lift some of the larger slabs of concrete to allow teams of rescuers to begin the task of taking out bodies and searching for survivors.
One woman was removed covered in a dark red patterned cloth and carried to a waiting ambulance on a stretcher. Crowds of women waiting nearby could be heard sobbing. A crushed teddy bear and a dismantled gas stove were among the items poking out from the rubble.
“Figures show five deaths and 27 injured up to 2pm,” the corporation’s spokesperson Vijay Khabale-Patil said.
The injured were taken to nearby hospitals.
Local politician Bhai Jagtap said that 22 families lived in the destroyed block.
“The rest of the people are down below, calling people from inside. Rescuers are doing their level best to save lives,” he said after visiting the scene.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) also said that 22 families were housed there.
Local commander Alok Avasthy from the NDMA’s response force initially said that up to 70 people were feared trapped.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai said that the building was for employees of the local administration and their families who had been asked to move out earlier this year.
“The building was around 30 years old. We had issued a notice to them in April to vacate the building, but they did not act,” Khabale-Patil said.
He did not explain why the families had been asked to leave.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing