PRETORIA: The death toll from the Nigerian church collapse has now climbed to 115 people, with 84 of them South Africans, a South African minister said Monday, citing sources in Lagos.

“We understand from our assessment team that the total number of people who have perished is now 115, but those are not all South Africans,” said Jeff Radebe, the minister in charge of Pretoria’s response to the disaster.

The casualties include 84 South Africans, said Radebe, speaking after around two dozen injured survivors were repatriated home. Ten days after the disaster, Nigerian officials struggled to immediately confirm the death toll.

“There could have been additional deaths on arrival at the hospitals,” suggested rescuers’ spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye, of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

He said it was now up to the church and the various embassies to give the exact final toll.

Minister Radebe revised the numbers of injured that arrived to 25, because one refused to board the medical evacuation plane in Lagos and chosen to return to the church which crumbled in Lagos on Sept. 12.

The plan was to bring back all the 26, but “there were only 25 who actually boarded the aircraft because one returned to the synagogue yesterday,” said Radebe.

The 26 survived after being trapped under rubble when a guesthouse attached to the church run by a prominent Nigerian preacher TB Joshua collapsed more than a week ago.

A 19-member medical team including specialized doctors, nurses and medical military paramedics took care of the injured on board a military C-130 aircraft.

“It’s the biggest evacuation effort by the (South African) Air Force since the dawn of democracy,” two decades ago, said Radebe.

Two orphaned toddlers — that lost their parents in the tragedy — were among the survivors that returned on Monday.

Sixteen of the wounded were in critical condition, with some having had limbs amputated and one developed gangrene in the toes.

Others had developed kidney failure and were on dialysis.

They were loaded from the aircraft at Swartkop Air Force Base onto ambulances and driven to Steve Biko Academic Hospital in the capital Pretoria.