NAIROBI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Three people were killed after a perimeter wall collapsed at an active construction site in the Riverside area of Nairobi, Kenya's capital, on Saturday.
Bramwell Simiyu, chief officer for disaster management and coordination at the Nairobi County Government, said 11 construction workers were rescued alive from the rubble and rushed to nearby medical facilities with severe injuries.
Simiyu said 39 workers were on-site when the collapse occurred at around 11:30 a.m. (0830 GMT), noting that multi-agency emergency response, search, and rescue teams were actively operating at the construction site.
"Preliminary site assessments confirm that the main building on the property was still at the excavation and foundation stage, with no upper floors erected at the time of the incident," he said at the site.
The county government said 14 workers had been accounted for and confirmed safe at the scene, while search-and-rescue teams were still working to establish the whereabouts of the others.
The county government said hospital admission checks and on-site accountability exercises were ongoing to establish the status of all workers listed in the site's records.
Nairobi Regional Police Commander Issa Mohamud said a team was on the ground to coordinate the rescue operations and conduct investigations.
"We have three fatalities and others are injured. We want to know what happened and how," he said.
This came a day after a building under construction collapsed and killed six workers in the Syokimau area of Nairobi.
Several buildings have collapsed in Kenya in recent years, with experts pointing to poor regulatory enforcement and a lack of routine safety inspections by government officials. ■