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Kenyan rescuers race to free woman trapped under rubble for six days
Rescue workers use a bulldozer as they continue to search for survivors in Huruma neighbourhood in the rubble of a six-storey building that collapsed in Nairobi, Kenya, May 5, 2016. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
By Humphrey Malalo and Ben Makori
05/05/2016
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rescue workers were racing on Thursday to dig out a woman found alive under the rubble of a building in Kenya's capital six days after it collapsed, a senior officials at the site said.
The woman, who was receiving oxygen and had been connected to an intravenous drip by doctors, had survived in a pocket of broken masonry since the building crumbled on Friday night.
"She cannot move but she is safe," Pius Masai, an official leading the operation, told reporters after the woman was located. He said she had spoken to doctors on site.
Rescue workers were working with their hands and power tools to reach her.
The death toll from the collapse of the building has reached 35, another official at the site said. Including the woman now being dug out, workers have rescued a total of 137 people.
Earlier this week they had said there was little chance of finding any more survivors, although a baby was pulled out of the wreckage on Tuesday, dehydrated but with no sign of other injuries.
The building in Nairobi's Huruma district collapsed after days of heavy rain. The Interior Ministry said the building had been built close to a river and earmarked for demolition, but the local authorities had not acted on the order.
The building's collapse was the latest such disaster in a rapidly-expanding African city that is struggling to build homes fast enough. Several other buildings in Nairobi have crumbled in recent years, but without such a high death toll.
(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Ben Makori; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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