25 January 2025 , 20:01
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Two bodies recovered from wreckage of block in city of Konya, with three other people rescued
Rescuers have pulled the bodies of a 23-year-old woman and a man believed to be her husband from under a collapsed apartment building in central Turkey, state-run media said.
Three other people were rescued from the wreckage and were being treated in a hospital, the Anadolu news agency reported.
The collapse comes amid renewed focus on building safety after the deaths of 78 people in a fire on Tuesday that ripped through a 12-storey hotel at a ski resort in north-western Turkey. Investigators are examining whether proper fire prevention measures were in place.
The interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said on Saturday that 79 people were registered as living in the four-storey apartment block in the city of Konya, 160 miles (260km) south of the capital, Ankara.
Earlier, Yerlikaya said the last two people remaining under the debris were Syrian nationals. He added that the cause of the building collapse was not immediately known. “If there is a fault, negligence or anything else, we will learn it together,” he said.
TV images showed emergency workers sifting through a large pile of rubble on Saturday morning after the collapse the previous evening. Anadolu reported that four people linked to businesses operating on the building’s ground floor were detained as part of the investigation.
The second anniversary of an earthquake that hit southern Turkey and north Syria, killing more than 59,000 people, is two weeks away. The high death toll at the time was due in part to building safety regulations being ignored.
In 2004, a 12-storey apartment building collapsed in Konya, claiming the lives of 92 people and injuring 30 others. Structural flaws and negligence were blamed for the collapse.