TEHRAN, Iran –
Rescuers dug up debris Tuesday in the collapse of a building in southwestern Iran that killed at least 11 people, fearing many more could still be trapped under the rubble as authorities arrested the city’s mayor as the investigation expanded. of disaster.
The collapse of a 10-storey tower under construction in the Metropol building on Monday exposed its cement blocks and steel beams, while highlighting the ongoing crisis in Iranian construction projects, which has witnessed other disasters in the quake-prone country.
A video from Monday’s initial collapse showed thick dust rising over Abadan, an important oil-producing city in Khuzestan province, near Iran’s border with Iraq. The Metropolis building included two towers, one already under construction and the other under construction, although its lower commercial floors were completed and already had tenants.
On Tuesday, an emergency official interviewed on state television suggested that about 50 people may have been inside the building during the collapse, including people moving in the basement. However, it was not clear whether this figure included those already removed from the rubble. At least 39 people were injured, most of them slightly, officials said earlier.
Footage from air drones aired Tuesday showed the floors stuck together, leaving a pile of dusty, gray debris. A construction crane stood nearby while digging an excavator. State television said at least 11 people had been killed.
An angry mob at the scene chased and beat Abadan Mayor Hossein Hamidpur immediately after the crash, according to the semi-official news agency ILNA and online videos.
Police later arrested Hamidpur and nine others, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. Authorities initially said the owner of the building and its main contractor had also been arrested, although a later report by the Mizan Judicial News Agency on Tuesday said the two men had been killed in the collapse. Contradictory reports could not be reconciled immediately.
Authorities did not immediately say whether the detainees were facing charges and it was not immediately clear whether the lawyers represented them.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi offered his condolences and called on local authorities to get to the bottom of the matter. Iran’s Vice President for Economic Affairs, Mohsen Razaei, and Interior Minister Ahmad Wahidi visited the site.
Lawmakers launched a separate parliamentary inquiry into the case on Tuesday, trying to determine why the Amir Kabir Street building collapsed during a sandstorm. However, no major earthquake was reported near Abadan on Monday, about 660km (410 miles) southwest of Tehran.
A local journalist in Abadan has repeatedly expressed concern about the construction of the building, starting last year, publishing images that he said show sagging floors of the first tower. He also claims that there is corruption in the process of issuing building permits.
Later Tuesday, the state news agency IRNA quoted Faramarz Zogi, a construction expert and adviser to the Iranian League of Civil Engineers, as saying that “national construction measures have definitely not been complied with”. Authorities also announced a day of mourning Wednesday for the disaster.
Abadan became a center of development for the British in early 1909, when they built what became the largest oil refinery in the world at the time. Iran later nationalized its oil industry in the decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iraq’s long war against Iran in the 1980s led to the destruction of Abadan and the surrounding region in battle. Over the years since then, rapid private and state-owned construction projects have rebuilt the area amid complaints of shoddy construction practices.
The collapse reminded many of the fires in 2017 and the collapse of the iconic Plasco building in Tehran, which killed 26 people.
Abadan has suffered historical disasters before. In 1978, a deliberate fire at the city’s Cinema Rex killed hundreds. The fury of the fire has sparked unrest in Iran’s oil-rich regions and helped lead to the Islamic Revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
——
Associated Press writer John Gambrell of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Add Comment