Rescuers pull more bodies

Indian bridge collapse:

INDIA: Rescuers recovered more bodies Sunday from the debris of a partially constructed bridge which collapsed into a river in western India, killing at least 45 labourers, an official said.

Dozens of workers were presumed dead after being pinned under the rubble of the partially submerged bridge which gave way on Thursday over the Chambal river just outside the city of Kota in Rajasthan state.

Senior police official Rajeev Dasot told AFP rescuers had shifted their focus from finding survivors to pulling bodies out of the mangled structure using heavy equipment.

Dasot said 27 bodies had been recovered so far, but at least 18 others known to be trapped under debris and in the deep river waters were believed to be dead.

“There are two kinds of operations, overground and underwater. In both operations there is no chance of anyone surviving now,” he said.

Four people remained in hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.

Police identified the two companies building the bridge as South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Gammon India.

Two senior project managers, including a South Korean national, were arrested on Friday on accusations of culpable homicide and have been remanded in police custody, Dasot said. He said one of the men arrested was working as deputy project manager for Gammon while the South Korean was employed as chief project officer for Hyundai.

Fourteen other employees from both companies are being investigated but have not been arrested.

India’s national highway authority and the state government have launched an inquiry into the accident.

Deadly accidents on construction sites are relatively common in India, where health and safety rules are routinely flouted.

India has no figures for the number of occupational accidents annually, but the UN’s International Labour Organisation has estimated that 50,000 people die here each year from work-related causes.

Kota, Monday, AFP