A partially built flyover yesterday collapsed in India’s eastern city of Kolkata, killing at least one person and injuring scores, with many more feared trapped under mounds of debris, an official and a lawmaker said.
Police and passersby were using their hands to try to move giant slabs of concrete and metal to reach those trapped, after the bridge collapsed at about lunchtime on a busy road, television footage showed.
“One person is confirmed dead. Sixty-two people who were trapped under the debris have been shifted to hospital, some of them are critical,” Indian National Disaster Management Authority spokesman Anurag Gupta said.
Gupta said it was unclear how many people were still trapped under the debris, but said “pedestrians as well as vehicles came under the falling flyover.”
Specialist rescue teams armed with concrete cutters, drilling machines, sensors to detect life and sniffer dogs were being rushed to the scene, Gupta added.
Television footage showed one bloodied body trapped under a concrete slab, and also the hand of a person sticking out from under twisted debris.
“Monumental tragedy. Rescue ops on. Many feared dead,” Trinamool Congress Party spokesman Derek O’Brien posted on his Twitter account.
Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh said he was monitoring the situation, adding that he was “deeply saddened to know that precious lives have been lost in the Kolkata accident.”
An eyewitness at the scene described a loud bang “like a bomb blast and suddenly there was a lot of smoke and dust.”
“I looked at the other side of the road and people were screaming ‘the bridge is collapsing’,” the unnamed man told television networks.
The Press Trust of India news agency, citing police, said one person was dead with an unknown number of others trapped.
Kolkata is to host the World Twenty20 cricket final on Sunday.
The accident is the latest in a string of deadly construction collapses in India, some of which have highlighted shoddy building standards.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia