At least 23 people were trapped under a collapsed building in central China, officials said, as rescuers ripped apart the rubble brick by brick to reach survivors.
The building, consisting of a hotel, apartments and a cinema, collapsed in the city of Changsha, Hunan province, Friday afternoon, leaving a gaping hole in a densely built-up street frontage.
Another 39 people could not be reached after the incident, the Changsha mayor said.
It was not clear if authorities believed the people who could not be contacted were also under the rubble.
“The situation of the missing persons will be further evaluated,” Mayor Zheng Jianxin said.
The city authorities wanted to publish details of the victims until Saturday. But officials said five people were rescued from the structure overnight.
State media showed firefighters – aided by an excavator – cutting through a morass of metal and concrete slabs while rescuers called into the debris tower to communicate with survivors.
A crowd gathered as chains of rescuers removed bricks by hand, giving experts a closer look at the collapsed building.
Some of the injured were carried on stretchers through a narrow alleyway late Friday while sniffer dogs combed the area for further signs of life.
Authorities have yet to give a reason for the disaster, although speculation has centered on a possible overhaul of the property, which officials said was eight stories high, correcting previous reports that there were six.
“Tenants had made varying degrees of structural alterations to the premises,” state broadcaster CCTV reported, adding that the cause of the collapse is under investigation.
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President Xi Jinping called for a search for victims “at all costs,” state media reported, adding that he had ordered a thorough investigation into the cause of the collapse.
A senior communist party official had been dispatched to the scene beforehand – an indication of the seriousness of the disaster.
State Councilor Wang Yong, appointed by the central government, has been dispatched to lead a team “to lead the rescue and emergency operations,” according to an official statement on Saturday.
Building collapses are not uncommon in China due to weak safety and building standards, and corruption among enforcement officials.
In January, an explosion triggered by a suspected gas leak brought down a building in the city of Chongqing, killing more than a dozen people.
25 people lost their lives in June 2021 when a gas explosion hit a residential area in Shiyan city.
In the same month, 18 people were killed and others injured when a fire broke out at a martial arts school, with state media reporting that all the victims were boarders.