Abuja, March 13 (IANS): More than 100 children got trapped in the rubble of a three-storey building, housing a primary school, in the Nigerian city of Lagos on Wednesday, officials said.
There was no word on casualties yet and the cause of the collapse was not clear.
"Apparently the top floor of the building was home to a primary school, raising fears that students were killed or trapped," local broadcaster Channels said.
According to authorities, teams of rescue workers were at the scene where fatalities could have occurred given that the children were attending classes at the time when the building came down, Efe news reported.
"Rescue operations by the Lagos State Rescue Unit are on at the collapsed building in Lafiaji Area of Lagos Island," said the official Twitter account of the Lagos state government.
The school was on the top floor of the building. THe accident took place on an island at the southwestern end of Lagos Lagoon, which is connected to the rest of the city by bridges.
Prince Adams, a local resident, told local newspaper Punch he had seen as many as 10 pupils being take out from the rubble of the building. "It is terrible. Parents are crying. I can't withstand the gory sight," he was cited as saying in the paper's online edition.
A video of the scene, published by Punch, showed two ambulances surrounded by a large crowd of people.
Ibrahim Farinloye, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency's southwest region, said there was no immediate information on casualties at the school.
It was not unusual for poor quality buildings to collapse in Nigeria where rules governing constructions were often flouted, officials said.
On March 8, 2016, a five-storey building collapse in Lagos killed 30 people.
In December 2016, as many as 60 people were killed when church roof collapsed in the city of Uyo.
In September 2014, 116 people, including 84 South Africans, were killed in Lagos when a six-storey building collapsed during a religious gathering where a well-known television evangelist was preaching.
