Turkey building collapse death toll hits 14; eight still missing
ISTANBUL: The death toll has risen to 14 two days after a residential building collapsed in Istanbul, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Friday.
Eight people were still missing, he told a press conference, adding that so far 14 survivors have been pulled from the rubble.
The multi-storey building came crashing down on Wednesday in Kartal, a densely populated district on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Soylu, who read out the names of the dead and injured, said the cause of the collapse was still being investigated and that rain has not slowed down rescue operations.
Earlier in the day the minister visited the site of the accident and said a 16-year-old boy had been rescued.
A girl, 6, who was saved on Thursday was in an intensive care unit, Soylu said.
The delicate task of pulling both survivors and bodies from the rubble has been additionally complicated by the evacuation of buildings near by.
Special teams have been using lasers to scan adjacent buildings that were deemed to be at risk of imminent collapse, Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya has said.
The prosecutor’s office has started an investigation into the collapse.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy was rescued from the rubble of an eightstorey Istanbul building on Friday, nearly 48 hours after it collapsed, but the death toll rose to 14 and another 11 people are still missing, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.
The residential building, in the Kartal district on the Asian side of the city, collapsed on Wednesday.
Fourteen apartments were registered at the site but the top three floors of the building had been built illegally, the city’s governor said this week, and a textile workshop was operating without a licence at the entrance.
More bodies were pulled from the rubble on Friday, raising the death toll to 14, Soylu told a news conference, adding that 11 others were still being sought by emergency teams.
A 16-year-old boy was rescued from under the rubble early on Friday, two days after the collapse, footage from the site showed.
Seven nearby buildings were evacuated for security reasons on Thursday, while prosecutors in Istanbul carried out an investigation into the cause of the incident.