The death toll from a residential building collapse in New York rose to at least eight on Thursday, the city's fire department said, after more bodies were recovered from the rubble.
Rescuers worked through the night, searching the site in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn where the three-story building collapsed on Wednesday.
Four people were transported to hospital in critical condition, the fire department said, with over a dozen others also reported injured.
Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said Wednesday that seven children were among the injured.
Shop worker James Williams, 60, said he witnessed the building collapse after hearing loud banging noises throughout the morning.
"I smelled the smoke from the fumes, and I was watching bricks fall. But to see, like two minutes later, to see the building collapse and fall, it was just devastating," he told AFP.
"There were people trying to get out... I saw somebody on the side of the staircase, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't even really want to think about that."
Another witness, 14-year-old Kenneilia Reid, told AFP: "When I was walking by, I started seeing dust all of a sudden, and I was like, what is going on? When I turned my back, I saw the whole building collapse."
The building, a three-story structure dating from 1930 with four apartments and a commercial space on the ground floor, collapsed onto a nearby excavation site.
A massive emergency response was launched, with about 250 firefighters and rescue workers, and search dogs, on site.
An adjacent building was also affected, with one of its walls torn away, leaving a staircase and rooms exposed on the rubble.
The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear, and firefighters continued to work at site on Thursday.
Stop-work order
"My stomach hurts. I can't imagine you were just in your kitchen doing something" and then "you're not any place. It's crazy," Annemarie, a 60-year-old care worker who did not want to share her last name, told AFP. She lives on street behind the collapsed building.
"It could have been me, you know, it's really scary," she said.
The building fell into an adjacent work site, where construction workers had been excavating, Ahmed Tigani, commissioner of New York's Department of Buildings, told a press conference late Wednesday.
Tigani said that developers had plans approved for a three-story building at the site and were pursuing permission for a nine-story building.
According to documents from the city's building department reviewed by AFP, the construction site had been issued a stop-work order in April due to potentially dangerous demolition conditions.
However, work continued, resulting in a $10,000 fine for the company involved. No link has yet been established between these violations and the building's collapse.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the emergency services for their work, saying the site involved "precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface."
"I want to ask New Yorkers to please take a moment to pray for those who passed away today and all of those who are mourning their loss," he added at the news conference.
The city's Department of Buildings said its inspectors were on the scene "assisting with recovery operations and conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings."
