Our Correspondent
Sukkur
A three-year-old girl was rescued alive after 21 hours from underneath the debris of a multi-storey building which had collapsed a day earlier in Sukkur.
According to Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) officials and army officers who participated in the rescue efforts on Friday, the girl miraculously “did not even have a scratch on her”. She was rushed to the city’s Civil Hospital via an Edhi ambulance.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the collapse rose to six, according to Sukkur Commissioner Shafiq Ahmed Mahesar. More than 17 people were also said to have been injured in the incident.
Twelve people were pulled out of the building debris in a wounded state on Thursday. They were shifted to Civil Hospital for first aid, where a one-year-old baby and two women later succumbed to their injuries.
The building, located on Sukkur’s busy Station Road, was constructed above a few shops and housed four families.
Rescuers at the scene initially faced difficulties after the collapse caused a power blackout in the area.
Commissioner Mahesar, who was supervising rescue efforts at the site, revealed that more than 20 members of four brothers’ families were living in the four-storey building.
Mahesar said the building could have collapsed either because substandard material was used in its construction or because it was not built according to the approved maps. The actual cause will be investigated, he added.
