At least 12 people including three children died as a five-storey residential building in Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo collapsed in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Emergency teams searching for people under the rubble have also found a few survivors, who have been referred to the local hospital. At least two of the injured are in critical condition. It is estimated that there are around 20 people trapped under the rubble.
Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood is predominantly Kurdish and many of the residents are internally displaced persons who fled Afrin when Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian factions took control of the city in 2018.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who currently control the neighbourhood, said that water leakage had weakened the foundations of the building.
Many buildings in Aleppo have been destroyed or damaged during the ongoing conflicts in Syria, which have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.