A 21-story apartment building in Lagos, Nigeria, collapsed Monday, leaving three dead and dozens missing, according to officials and witnesses.
Angry crowds confronted officials who arrived at the scene several hours after the building fell, The Associated Press reported.
Bystander Olayemi Bello said that five of his friends were trapped in the rubble and he feared that they were dead, the outlet reported.
“When they work finish, they will come outside and they will play with us and talk about the work,” he said, according to the AP. “Now, nobody. All of them are dead.”
The sudden collapse of a 21-story luxury building under construction in Lagos, Nigeria, has sparked fears that workers are trapped inside https://t.co/A8S05Vdx8r pic.twitter.com/Y0KyCjHgFM
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Eric Tetteh, a construction worker, said that his brother escaped the building, but he estimated that over 100 people were inside when it collapsed, the AP reported. (RELATED: Condo Collapse Aftermath: At Least 9 Dead As Search Continues For 156 Missing People In Miami)
The building had been under construction for two years, and the cause of the collapse is currently unknown, according to the outlet.
Such incidents in Lagos are fairly common, as building code regulations are not well enforced, The AP reported. Forty-three buildings in Nigeria collapsed in 2019 alone, and at least 160 people died when a church collapsed in Nigeria in 2016, Forbes reported.
A Nigerian school collapsed in March 2019, leaving at least eight children dead.