Death toll in Karachi building collapse climbs to 26 as more bodies pulled out from rubble

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KARACHI: Rescue efforts entered their second day after continuing overnight, when authorities raided time to find out the survivors and recover the bodies from the rubble of a demolished residential building in the Baghdadi area of ​​Lari.

A decades -old building in a densely populated Karachi neighborhood, with more than 40 people in 20 apartments on Friday.

So far, rescue workers have recovered 26 bodies-including nine women, 15 men and a ten-year-old boy and a half-year-old girl-according to the hospital administration, while three people are undergoing treatment.

The collapse of the building was marked by chaos and suffering when relatives of the trapped victims tried to help rescue workers, disrupting operations inadvertently.

Rangers and City Wardens were later deployed to remove the area and people were prevented from approaching the site. The identification of the survivors – a device that detects heartbeat under the rubble – heavy machinery is being used to clean the debris with survivors.

The equipment is deployed after cleaning each layer of debris, which makes the operation long but complete. It may take several more hours to complete the mission, officials said.

With the search operation for more than 20 hours, District South Deputy Commissioner Javed Khoso said on Saturday that it could take eight to 10 hours to complete the rescue operation.

The DC said, “The building was declared dangerous three years ago. A month and a half ago, a notice was issued to the building,” DC added, adding that there are still 22 most dangerous buildings in Lyari. Of these, 16 have been evacuated.

He added that efforts are also being made to evacuate the remaining buildings and the failure to comply with the directive has been warned about legal action.

Recalling the incident, Yusuf, one of the survivors of the building, confessed that two notices had already been issued to evacuate the building.

“The building was shaken twice before the accident. [I] “The fourth was on the floor and was going down the stairs with my aunt at the time of the accident,” he noted.

Meanwhile, while talking to the media during his visit to the incident late on Friday night, Karachi Commissioner Syed Hassan Naqvi advised the residents of the destroyed buildings to move to anywhere to avoid any malfunction.

“We cannot force anyone to evacuate anyone,” he said, adding that he would meet with the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) on the issue of illegal construction.

The Sindh government has constituted a high -level committee to investigate the incident, which will submit its report in three days, the SBCA revealed that the demolition structure was 30 years old and was declared unsafe.

The SBCA claims that it had issued formal evacuation notices two years ago, and on June 25, 2025, also sent notices to the Electric and Water Board to disconnect utility services-but neither contacts were cut off nor the building was evacuated.

Reacting to the incident, the association of the builders and developers (Abid) Hassan Bakhshi has called on the government to occupy the dilapidated buildings and manage the residents to stay somewhere.

“Buildings should be built and residents should be sent to rent for two years,” said Bakshi.

The Abdul Officer also highlighted that his forum was ready to cooperate and participate in this regard.

Yesterday’s incident, though unfortunately, is not an accident once because Karachi has seen a model of the collapse of the building since 2017.

The deadly incidents are widely connected to illegal and dilapidated buildings, many of which have long been declared unsafe, but is occupied by the SBCA due to weak implementation.

The incident has also highlighted the current threat posed by the SBCA already unsafe and disqualified buildings. The number of such buildings in Karachi is standing at 578 and 456 of them are only in the south.

Other districts also face danger: Central (66), Kamari (23), Korangi (14), East (13), Malir (4), and West (2).

Experts emphasized that not just notes and banners are not enough. They urge the Sindh government to immediately evacuate such buildings and provide temporary accommodation to the homeless residents to prevent future tragedies.