JEDDAH: Four people were killed and one was injured when the interior floors of a three-story residential building in Jeddah’s southern Al-Jamiah district crashed down on Sunday afternoon. Civil Defense expected to recover more bodies during the rescue operation that continued late into the night.
“Four Civil Defense teams are currently at the location along with a number of ambulance teams and are working quickly to sift the debris,” Jeddah Civil Defense spokesman Capt. Abdul Rahman Al-Ghamdi told Arab News at the scene. “A special team fully equipped with logistics support for rescue operations is also on hand. Special lighting had to be set up to carry out the rescue operation, as the area was dark.”
The two floors of the building collapsed with an unknown number of people inside. The building itself remained standing. Rescue operations were hindered due to the narrowness of the street where the accident occurred.
Eyewitnesses said the four dead men were Yemeni nationals. The injured man was believed to be Egyptian.
Al-Ghamdi, however, did not confirm the nationalities of the dead or the injured. He said the four bodies were recovered from the rubble at around 5 p.m. The dead and injured were taken to King Abdul Aziz Hospital.
The men who died in the collapse were reportedly asleep in a flat on the ground floor when the two upper floors came crashing down. Residents said they were employees in a coffee shop and worked in shifts.
The building, located near Al-Jamiah market, was one of many older and dilapidated structures in the area.
In January, three people were injured, one of them seriously, when a two-story building located in Al-Jamiah district collapsed as a result of a gas cylinder explosion.
According to officials, the poorly constructed building collapsed due to the impact of the gas explosion. The Civil Defense reported that preliminary investigations showed cooking gas had spread throughout the ground floor and eventually ignited.
