The death toll from a building collapse in Syria’s northern Aleppo province has risen to 13, with dozens still missing under the rubble of the building, the Interior Ministry said.
The official Kurdish news agency Anha gave a provisional figure of 12 deaths, including five children, but the ministry did not mention any children killed so far.
The first number of victims, ten, was reported by various Syrian sources, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported the collapse of a five-story building in the Sheikh Masoud neighborhood, an area controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces.
“At 03:00 in the morning (00:00 in Lisbon), a five-story residential building collapsed in the Sheikh Masoud district. Thirteen bodies and one living person were removed from the rubble according to an interim report,” he said. the ministry. in a sentence.
Rescue teams, civil defense forces and firefighters are continuing their search operations for other people still missing in the Sheikh Masoud neighbourhood.
The collapse, which occurred while residents were sleeping, was caused “by water seeping into the foundations,” the official Syrian news agency SANA said.
Seven families were housed in the five-story structure according to the Interior Ministry, around 35 people according to residents.
Residential building collapses are not uncommon in Aleppo, either from illegal construction without solid foundations or from cracks in the structures caused by heavy fighting in this northern city between soldiers and rebels at the height of the crisis.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in the UK but has an extensive network of sources in Syria, the victims were people from the city of Afrin, displaced by the war.
The Sheikh Masoud neighborhood is populated mainly by Syrian Kurds, including fighters, many of whom fled Afrin after neighboring Turkey launched an offensive in 2018.
The city of Aleppo is under government control after being retaken by rebels at the cost of bloody fighting, but Kurdish forces ensure business and security in the Sheikh Masoud district.
Nearly half a million people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since it broke out in 2011, and around half of the pre-war population has been displaced.
Large numbers of displaced people have had to move into buildings in poor condition.
Last September, a building collapse in Aleppo’s Ferdaous district killed 10 people, including three children.
Source: TSF
