At least 21 people, mostly children, were killed on Friday when a school collapsed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, a Red Cross official told TRT Afrika.
Some 71 others were receiving treatment in hospitals for varying degrees of injuries, Nurudeen Hussaini Magaji, who is the secretary of Red Cross in Plateau state, said.
Many of those in the two-storey building housing Saints Academy in the Plateau State capital escaped unhurt, he added.
More than 150 students were at the school when the disaster happened, officials said.
‘’Most of the victims were aged between 10 and 13 years,’’ Magaji added. He described the incident as ‘’shocking and frightening’’.
The exact cause of the building collapse was not immediately clear, but it followed ‘’days of heavy rains’’ in the city, he explained.
'Pathetic and tragic'
The victims were taken to at least three hospitals in the city, residents said. Some of the wounded are reportedly in critical conditions.
''The situation is pathetic and tragic. I went to two hospitals where I saw 16 dead bodies deposited at the mortuaries and also some injured students,'' an eyewitness, Muhammad Shitu, told TRT Afrika.
''All the bodies I saw were of students. The situation is too terrible. Those who survived have lost excess blood, and people are rushing to donate blood,'' Shitu added.
Trapped students were heard crying for help under the rubble after the Saints Academy school fell on the learners.
Mechanical diggers tried to rescue the victims while parents desperately looked for their children.
Search and rescue
With his mother at his hospital bedside, injured student Wulliya Ibrahim told AFP: "I entered the class not more than five minutes, when I heard a sound, and the next thing is I found myself here."
"We are many in the class, we were writing our exams," he said.
The National Emergency Management Agency said the building collapsed killed "several students" without giving details.
"NEMA and other critical stakeholders are presently carrying out Search and Rescue operations," it said.
A resident at the scene Chika Obioha told AFP he saw at least eight bodies at the site and that dozens more had been injured.
"Everyone is helping out to see if we can rescue more people," he said.
Building collapses are fairly common in Africa's most populous nation because of lax enforcement of building standards, negligence and use of low-quality materials.
Poor workmanship
At least 45 people were killed in 2021 when a high-rise building under construction collapsed in the upscale Ikoyi district in Nigeria's economic capital Lagos.
Ten people were killed when a three-storey building collapsed in the Ebute-Metta area of Lagos the year after.
Since 2005, at least 152 buildings have collapsed in Lagos, according to a South African university researcher investigating construction disasters.
Bad workmanship, low-quality materials and corruption to bypass official oversight are often blamed for Nigerian building disasters.
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