Several persons were feared dead or injured when a two-storey building collapsed in Lagos Island Wednesday evening, eyewitnesses said. They said at least five bodies, including that of a nine-year-old baby, has been retrieved from the rubble of the building. Rescue officials worked late into the night after some residents who escaped said others were still trapped in the rubble. The cause of the collapse was not yet known, but the Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Francisco Abosede, told journalists the building was ‘old’. He said there was need to verify the structural integrity of the buildings in the state, after a series of deadly building collapse in recent times. On 24 December 2007, three persons were killed also in Lagos Island when a three-storey building was gutted by fire and later collapsed.
