6 dead near Kenya’s capital after building collapses
Six people died near Kenya’s capital Nairobi after the top floor of a building under construction collapsed on Friday, a police official said, the latest in a string of construction accidents to hit the country recently.
“So far we have confirmed six bodies, but also five people have been rushed to Imara Daima Hospital,” Duncan Ochieng, the assistant inspector general of police in charge of disaster management in Kenya, told media gathered at the scene.
A total of 405 workers were on site when the collapse occurred, and everybody had now been accounted for, Ochieng said. He said the top floor of the multi-storey building came down while under construction and that the site had been closed afterwards.
The collapse occurred in the Syokimau area southeast of Nairobi, the Kenya Red Cross said in a post on social media.
On October 23, a 12-storey structure collapsed in Nairobi, killing eight people.
Building collapses are mainly the result of poor workmanship, substandard materials, weak supervision and faulty structural designs, according to the state-run Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis.
As of October there had been 24 building collapses in Kenya in 2026, more than any other year this decade, according to Stats Kenya, a company specialising in data-driven research.
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