AT least five people were killed and dozens injured after a four-storey building collapsed in the centre of Tanzania’s commercial capital Dar es Salaam on Saturday, rescuers said.
The building in Kariakoo, the East African country’s busiest market, caved in as people were shopping in the morning.
Hundreds of rescuers using their bare hands, drills and sledgehammers, combed through the rubble in a multi-agency hunt for survivors, alongside excavators.
“There is the possibility that more people are still trapped in the basement,” fire brigade commander Peter Mtui told reporters.
At least 56 people had been rescued and rushed to various hospitals, the Tanzania Red Cross Society said on X.
Witnesses told The Citizen newspaper that the building started expanding its underground business space on Friday before it collapsed a day later.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who departed Tanzania on Saturday to attend the G20 summit in Brazil, said she was “saddened” by the news of the collapse.
Tanzania’s growing population and buoyant economy has fuelled a rapid construction boom with the speed raising concerns over standards.
Dar es Salaam, a port city on the Indian Ocean coast and home to more than five million people, has seen most of the expansion, and is one of the world’s fastest growing cities, according to the World Bank.
In 2013, a 16-storey building collapsed in Dar es Salaam, killing 34 people.
