School children feared trapped in school collapse in Nigeria

Many people including children died and up to 100 children were among those feared trapped after a four-storey building containing a primary school collapsed in Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday.

Workers on top of the rubble shovelled debris away as thousands of people swarmed around the site to watch, many of them angry or hysterical, with police, ambulances, Red Cross workers, fire trucks and a fork lift in their midst.

The building was in the Ita-faji area of Lagos island, the original heart of the lagoon city before it expanded onto the mainland.

Residents said around 100 children had attended the school, which was on the top levels of the building, and that eight had been rescued so far.

Out going Lagos State Governor Akinwuni Ambode visited the site and offered commiserations to bereaved families, but did not say how many had died.

A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency’s southwest region said casualty figures were not yet available but that many people including children were believed to be trapped.

The Lagos emergency management agency said 10 people had been recovered alive since emergency responders arrived, and others beforehand.

Ambode said the school had been set up illegally and that buildings in the area were undergoing integrity testing.

Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials often substandard.

In 2016, more than 100 people were killed when a church came down in the southeast, and in Lagos the same year, a five-storey building collapsed, killing at least 30 people.

A floating school built to withstand storms and floods also collapsed in Lagos in 2016, though no injuries were reported.

Edited from Reuters