Rescuers race to find survivors of Nigeria school collapse

Rescuers workers were attempting to find students buried under rubble after a two-story school collapsed during morning classes Friday in north-central Nigeria, killing 22 students.

Workers were searching for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble, authorities said.

The Saints Academy college in Plateau state’s Busa Buji community collapsed shortly after students, many of whom were 15 years old or younger, arrived for classes.

“As of this morning, we have a total of 22 lives lost, many are still in hospital, but we thank God, the casualties could have been more because yesterday we understand that quite a number of the final year students did not come to school," said Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang.

A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but Plateau police spokesperson Alfred Alabo later said 132 of them had been rescued and were being treated for injuries in various hospitals.

Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some weeping and others offering to help, as excavators combed through the debris from the part of the building that had caved in.

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said rescue and health workers as well as security forces were deployed at the scene immediately after the collapse, launching a search for the trapped students.

The state government blamed the tragedy on the school’s “weak structure and location near a riverbank." It urged schools facing similar issues to shut down.

Building collapses are becoming common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than a dozen such incidents recorded in the last two years.

Authorities often blame such disasters on a failure to enforce building safety regulations and on poor maintenance.