17 dead as building collapses in Dar es Salaam

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, rescue workers search for survivors at the building collapse site in downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Friday, March 29, 2013. A Tanzanian police official says two people have died after a building under construction collapsed in the country’s largest city and economic center. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Ping)

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — More bodies, including those of two children, have been pulled out of the rubble of the building that collapsed in Dar es Salaam, bringing the toll to 17, a local government official said Saturday.

“So far the number of people who are dead is 17. This includes two children,” regional commissioner Saidi Mecky Sadicky told Agence France-Presse.

He said four children in all had been reported missing and rescuers were still looking for two of them.

Dozens of people is all are still missing around the site.

“The operation is still going on but we have very little hope to find anyone alive,” he said.

Eighteen people have been rescued alive from the remains of the 16-story building that came crashing down on Friday morning, he said.

Hundreds of rescuers worked through the night in search of those still trapped in the rubble from the shell of the tower, which was being built near a mosque in the Kisutu area of Tanzania’s economic capital.