Azernews.Az

At least 14 people have been killed, including six children, after an illegally occupied building in northeastern Brazil partially collapsed, rescuers confirmed late Saturday, Azernews reports.

The authorities revised the initial death toll of 11 after firefighters searching through the debris found the bodies of a woman and two children following the collapse Friday in Paulista, a city in the state of Pernambuco.

The dead included men, women and children, aged 5 to 45, according to a statement Saturday from the Pernambuco civil defense services.

Searchers combed through the rubble with the help of sniffer dogs and rescued two 15-year-old girls and a 65-year-old woman alive, firefighters said. An 18-year-old man was also removed alive but later died from his injuries.

"Search operations are now focused on the removal of animals," the fire department said Saturday.

The three-story structure, which was attached to a larger housing complex, had been closed in 2010 due to a risk of collapse but had been illegally occupied since then, the authorities said.

City officials referred to the structure as a "coffin block," a name given to buildings built on a large scale in the 1970s in the metropolitan region of Recife, the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported.

In April, a building in similar condition collapsed in the city of Olinda, also in Pernambuco, leaving six people dead.

Building collapses in Brazil generally happen in poorer neighborhoods where illegal construction is rampant.

In 2020, two irregularly constructed buildings in a poor neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro collapsed after days of intense rainfall, killing 24 people.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz