At least eight people have been killed after a shopping center in southern China collapsed, trapping scores of people under tons of rubble, reports and officials from Dongguan city said Saturday.
The commercial center in Chiling village was flattened on Friday when two new floors that were being added on collapsed on to the existing one-storey, 1,000 square meter (3,280 square feet) structure.
It was unclear how many people had been in the building but one local official told AFP the figure could be as high as 200.
"We don't know how many are dead, but we estimate that about 200 people were buried when the building collapsed," the official at the Houjie township government in Dongguan said by phone.
But by mid-afternoon Saturday only eight bodies had been recovered while another 32 people had been pulled from the rubble, some of them seriously injured.
The China News Service reported seven dead, but "more than 100 missing."
An official at the Houjie Township fire station said the building collapsed about 2:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) on Friday, with rescue operations beginning immediately and continuing throughout the night.
Firemen and police descended on the scene from neighboring Dongguan, sending injured victims to four nearby hospitals, he said.
Much of the rescue and clean up work had been completed by Saturday morning, and a final report on fatalities was still awaited, he said.
"Some of the seriously injured might not make it in the hospital," he said.
The popular shopping center in Chiling village was undergoing renovation, with two upper floors nearing completion, he said.
Rescue workers used nine excavators to remove slabs of concrete as they frantically began searching for buried victims, the Guangdong's Xingkuai News said on its online website.
The building was owned by the local government who rented out stalls in the building that local entrepreneurs turned into small restaurants and food and clothing shops.
Police were investigating the causes of the collapse, while reports said the contractor doing the construction and village party secretary and manager of the building named Ye, were detained for questioning.
The southern Yangcheng Evening News in an online report quoted witnesses as saying cracks began appearing on the walls of some of the 20 shops and restaurants in the complex Friday, but few paid heed to calls to evacuate the building which collapsed only moments later -- BEIJING (AFP)
Chiling village is in the Houjie township, a part of Dongguan city, which lies just an hour's drive north of Hong Kong.
The commercial center is usually very crowded on weekends, but as Friday was pay day, more shoppers than normal were in the complex, the paper said.
sai/am/wai
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