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Provinces

Remains of Metropol Tower Collapse During Site Clearing

September 14, 2022
OstanWire
1 min read
The Metropol building's Tower 2 collapsed in May this year, killing scores of people
The Metropol building's Tower 2 collapsed in May this year, killing scores of people

Local sources report that still-standing parts of the Metropol building collapsed today during a planned demolition, with fears that one or more onsite workers could be trapped.

Work to clear the site is still ongoing months after the 10-storey Tower 2 of the unfinished commercial complex in Abadan, Khuzestan came crashing down on May 23 due to non-observance of building safety guidelines, killing scores of people.

The CEO of the Red Crescent Society in Khuzestan, Vahid Shabani, confirmed the new incident late on Wednesday, stating simply: “The forces of the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters were at work demolishing the rest of the Metropol, and unfortunately, part of the building collapsed.”

The Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters is a commercial arm of the IRGC established around 30 years ago. Today it is one of the country’s most important contractors and takes the place of private entities in many large infrastructural projects.

Shabani declined to say how many operatives were onsite at the time of the collapse. But he added that five search and rescue teams had been dispatched to the scene from Ahvaz.

Instead it was the head of emergency incident management at Abadan University of Medical Sciences, which runs the city’s main public hospital, who obliquely warned Mehr News Agency about the possibility of workers still being trapped under the rubble.

Official sources put the death toll of the Metropol disaster in May at around 80, but the true figure is expected to be higher. It came after months of repeated warnings about structural deficiencies, to which local government officials had apparently turned a blind eye.

At the end of August the judiciary sentenced 21 people to prison time in connection with the tragedy. One of them, the building’s owner Hossein Abdolbaghi, was sentenced posthumously as he was reported by state media to have died at the scene.

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