An unknown
number of people died when a building under construction collapsed in Pyongyang
theguardian.com,
Reuters, Seoul, Sunday 18 May 2014
A construction division officer apologises to residents, in a picture released by North Korea's official news agency KCNA. Photograph: KNS/AFP/Getty Images |
North Korea
has apologised to bereaved families after an apartment building collapsed in
Pyongyang last week, the official KCNA news agency said, a rare admission of
fallibility from the reclusive state. It is unknown how many died in the
accident.
Pyongyang's
expression of "profound consolation and apology" was the first
official news of the disaster, which happened in the Phyongchon district of the
North Korean capital on Tuesday.
"The
construction of an apartment house was not done properly and officials
supervised and controlled it in an irresponsible manner," said the
statement from KCNA, which is better known for its strident attacks on South
Korea and the United States.
The KCNA statement
said the collapse of the apartment building "claimed casualties" but
did not give any indication of how many may have been killed or injured. It
said a rescue operation ended on Saturday.
An official
from South Korea's unification ministry said on Sunday that a 23-storey
apartment building had collapsed in Pyongyang on Tuesday, but he would not say
from where the information had been obtained.
The
official, who asked not to be identified, said "hundreds" were
presumed to be dead.
The KCNA
statement said North Korean authorities put emergency measures into place to
rescue people from the collapsed building and to treat the injured.
It said
Choe Pu-il, North Korea's minister of people's security, had
"repented", saying he had failed to supervise the project adequately,
"thereby causing an unimaginable accident".
The North
had launched vitriolic criticism of South Korea's government for its handling
of the ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people, many of them
schoolchildren, last month.
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