A new estimated death toll provided to AFP by a fire officer and local officials indicates that at least 33 people were killed and five others were injured after an apartment building collapsed on Saturday night in Douala, the nation’s commercial center.

A four-story apartment building in the north of Douala collapsed onto a one-story residential structure on Saturday night at around 01:30 (00:30 GMT). According to a fire official who spoke on the record under the condition of anonymity and the governor of Littoral, one of the nation’s ten regions, the disaster resulted in 33 fatalities and 21 injuries, including five that required “absolute emergency” care.

According to a local resident reached by AFP, rescue activities, including the removal of wreckage with a mechanical shovel in the hope of finding survivors, started on Sunday and proceeded into the evening and Monday early.

Samuel Dieudonné Ivaha Diboua, the governor of the Littoral region, visited the scene on Sunday and declared that “the situation is under control” and that “the firefighters are working to ensure that no one remains under the rubble.”

A previous provisional count from late on Sunday put the death toll at least at sixteen, with five injuries necessitating immediate medical attention.

The same day, Douala’s Laquintinie hospital reported treating “thirteen cases from this tragedy” and recording two deaths, including “a three-year-old girl and a 19-year-old girl”.

According to the hospital, the remaining eleven patients were three youngsters receiving emergency pediatric care, two teenagers, a 28-year-old woman, and five men.

Five people died in 2016 when a residential structure in Douala collapsed, and the authorities brought up the problem of construction standards compliance. They had identified 500 structures in the city that were “threatening ruin” by June of the same year.