Cries heard as rescuers search rubble of Nairobi building, at least 10 dead

<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"></strong></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><img height="360" src="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/image/2745888/1462013711000/large16x9/768/432/rescue-workers-search-for.jpg" width="640" /></strong><br /> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">NAIROBI: Rescue workers raced on Saturday to save more residents from the rubble of a six-storey building in Nairobi - including a mother and baby whose cries could be heard - after it collapsed overnight following heavy rain. Ten people were confirmed dead.</strong></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> President Uhuru Kenyatta visited the site of Friday night's disaster and ordered the arrest of the owners.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> "We are still hearing some voices from the collapsed building," Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre director Colonel Nathan Kigotho, told reporters at the scene. "We don't have the exact number of people buried in the rubble."</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> Ten bodies had been recovered from the building so far and a mother and baby could be heard beneath the rubble, Interior Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery told reporters.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> Heavier than usual rains have led to building collapses in the past in poor neighborhoods of the Kenyan capital, which residents have blamed on shoddy or illegal construction.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> The building in Nairobi's poor suburb of Huruma in eastern Nairobi had 198 rooms, Kigotho said. Some residents escaped before the collapse and at least 133 people had been rescued.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> The president told officials "to undertake an immediate survey of all the houses in the area to find out those which are at risk of collapsing," his office said in a statement.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> Kigotho said two of the seven people known to have been killed were adults and the five others were children.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> "The biggest cause of this was that the building was next to the river. The water most likely undermined the foundation," he said.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> Police said more than 120 people had been taken to hospital. Residents cheered overnight as one casualty was hauled alive from the broken masonry, others clapped on Saturday morning as the president walked through a muddy street at the scene.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> Lower floors of the building crumpled, leaving some of the top storey almost intact. Broken bed frames, mattresses and clothes protruded from the wreckage.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> "It is raining, and these houses were built without Nairobi County authorization," Jonathan Mueke, deputy governor of Nairobi County, told privately-owned QTV station.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #606060; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px;"> "I am asking residents in the area to leave. In the area where this one collapsed there are 189 houses," he said.</div>

Cries heard as rescuers search rubble of Nairobi building, at least 10 dead

NAIROBI: Rescue workers raced on Saturday to save more residents from the rubble of a six-storey building in Nairobi - including a mothe...

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