As at the time of this report, rescue workers are continuing their efforts to retrieve eight other construction workers still buried underneath the rubbles.
Rescue workers said the list of those reported missing on Tuesday stood at 18 after three lifeless bodies were pulled out of the rubble when the building, under construction in Kiambu town, 20 kilometres outside Nairobi, collapsed.
Kenya Red-Cross workers at the site said there were high hopes of reaching more survivors alive after some of them called relatives and friends informing them that they were trapped in the basement of the building.
'We still have high hopes of finding more survivors. There were initially 17 survivors who were pulled out of the rubble and there are some other 18 missing persons,' said Tutus Mongo'u, the Spokesman of the Kenya Red-Cross Society, und ertaking the rescue operations.
Kenyan military helicopters flew low around the site of the building which collapsed just two days after a second building, also under construction, collapsed at a Nairobi suburb, killing one person.
It was the third such building to collapse in Kenya this year.
In 2006, 15 people were confirmed dead after a shopping mall under construction in down-town Nairobi collapsed.
Elite rescue workers from Israel had to be flown in to assist with the rescue work.
Kenyan Police said a manhunt was underway for the contractor of the building, said to be a proposed shopping mall.
'The building was below the construction standards. Efforts are in top gear to make sure that we arrest this man. The pillars of this building were definitely below standards,' local television station, NTV, quoted Provincial Police chief, John Mbijiwe, as saying.
Nairobi - 20/10/2009
Pana
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