At least four people, including two children, were killed after an apartment building collapsed overnight in Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital.
Officials said rescuers used torches to search through the mounds of broken concrete and found 30 people alive.
A survivor, Ladji Doumbia, who lived on the fourth floor, while narrating the incident said the whole building was shaking, adding: “I was stumbling from left to right and then, at the last minute, I heard a loud noise.”
On his visit to the site, Prime Minister Patrick Achi promised an investigation into the cause of the disaster, which occurred a week after another building collapsed in another part of Abidjan, killing several people.
“A certain number of actors still do not respect minimal rules and continue to take actions that lead to this type of situation,” Achi said.
Shortly after midnight, firefighters were called to the five-story building in the Cocody neighbourhood. The fire brigade said on Facebook that four bodies had been found in the rubble by midmorning.
It said 13 people were hospitalized. It was not immediately known how many people were in the building when it collapsed.
