JEDDAH: Civil Defense teams rescued eight workers on Sunday morning who were trapped in the rubble of a building which collapsed. The building was under construction in Makkah. Six of the rescued workers were transferred to hospital by Red Crescent while the others were treated at the site.

According to Col. Saeed Sarhan, spokesman for the Civil Defense in Makkah, the Civil Defense operations room received a report at 5:42 a.m. on Sunday that the roof of a four story building under construction had collapsed in the Umm Al-Joud district.

Search and rescue teams with necessary equipment were immediately sent to the site and pulled 8 workers from the rubble. There were injuries but none were fatal.

Sarhan said the collapse occurred during the molding process of a nine-meter dome in the middle of the building. He noted that preliminary investigations indicated the fault occurred in the supporting wooden columns carrying the cement used for molding.

Maj. Gen. Salem Al-Matrafi, director of Civil Defense in Makkah, was present at the site and supervised rescue operations.