UPDATE: 6 dead + 40 trapped under collapsed building following Mumbai floods

A play school was also functioning in one of the rooms of the building but it is unclear how many children were inside.

The five-storey Hussain building in the south of the city had 11 families living in it when it collapsed.

“Forty people are believed to be stuck inside and a 43-member team is conducting rescue operations,” an official for India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told AFP.

A play school was also functioning in one of the rooms of the building but it is not clear how many children were attending the school when the structure collapsed.

Emergency services and the NDRF personnel are carrying out a search and rescue operation and ambulances have taken 12 people to the nearby JJ Hospital – five of them are critically injured.

“As the incident happened at 8.30 in the morning there is the possibility of more people trapped inside,” an NDRF official said.

South Mumbai has more than 16,000 buildings built before 1940s and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) identified 791 of these buildings as dangerous in its pre-monsoon survey.

Locals have told reporters that the Hussain building was about 50 years old, however it is not clear if the building was classified as dangerous.

Source: Six dead and 40 trapped under collapsed building following Mumbai floods