The death toll at a building collapse in Cambodia has risen to 18 and increasingly desperate rescuers are picking through the compacted rubble for any further signs of life.
There are fears many more workers at the Chinese-owned site may be buried as rescuers had scoured barely half of the debris after the seven-storey building collapsed yesterday in the beach resort of Sihanoukville.
"I'm so lucky to be alive," survivor Phat Sophal, 37, said over the telephone.
In an ordeal that began before dawn while workers slept, Phat Sophal said he spent around six hours trapped in the debris, before being pulled out by rescuers yesterday morning.
Around 70 workers were sleeping on the second, third and fourth floors of the seven-storey building, he said, adding Chinese electricians were resting on the upper floors.
The former fishing village of Sihanoukville has seen a Chinese construction boom buoyed by tourists to its dozens of casinos in recent years, with questions raised on the speed of development in a nation notorious for lax safety standards.
Three Chinese nationals and a Cambodian landowner have been held for questioning over the building collapse, which Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen blamed on "carelessness" by the construction company.
Local authorities raised the death toll to 18 - including at least three women - with 24 injured.
At least 1,000 rescue workers, soldiers, police, medics and Chinese construction experts have been deployed to the site.
Some wore hard hats and oxygen tanks and used pneumatic drills to chip through concrete blocks, while the relatives of the injured waited at the site and at nearby hospitals for news.
"We fear more bodies are trapped in the debris because the search has not reached the bottom of the building yet," the official said.
It is not clear how many people were at the site at the time of the collapse.
There are an estimated 200,000 construction workers in Cambodia - about 11% of the informal work sector - most who are unskilled, paid day wages and are not protected by union rules, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Cambodia has not kept pace with the construction boom "to ensure safety and health of the sector's workforce," the ILO has said.
