KOLKATA, India -- A long section of an overpass under construction collapsed Thursday in a crowded Kolkata neighborhood and sent tons of concrete and steel slamming onto midday traffic, killing at least 22 people and leaving scores of others injured, police said.
With more than half the debris cleared by this morning, 67 people have been pulled out alive, Kolkata police Sgt. P. Chakraborty said. But more people were still feared trapped. It was not clear how many people were missing.
Rescuers used saws, small cranes and their bare hands to search for survivors. Smashed yellow taxis, destroyed rickshaws, and the bloody legs of trapped people jutted from the fallen girders and concrete.
The overpass spanned nearly the width of the street and was designed to ease traffic through the densely crowded Bara Bazaar neighborhood of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. About 300 feet of the overpass fell, while other sections remained standing.
"I heard an explosion, a solid one," said resident Rabindra Kumar Gupta, who had been home eating lunch when the overpass collapsed. "My apartment shook. The whole building shook. When I looked outside, there was a lot of smoke."
Another resident, Yogesh Sharma, described a "huge crashing sound" when the overpass toppled as he was sitting at a roadside tea stand with friends.
"I left my cup of tea and ran," said Sharma, 23. "I was crying at the spot."
Army troops and personnel from the National Disaster Response Force joined the effort to pull people from smashed vehicles. Huge cranes and other equipment were taken to the site to begin clearing the rubble. Workers also used cutting torches to pry open the slabs.
The operation was a "very, very challenging task," said O.P. Singh, chief of the disaster response force. Rescuers also used dogs and special cameras to find people who were trapped, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Washington at the time of the collapse, called Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the top elected official of West Bengal state, to express grief at the tragedy and pledge federal support.
He said he was "shocked and saddened" by the collapse, according to a message on his Twitter account. "My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives in Kolkata. May the injured recover at the earliest."
Banerjee, the top elected official of West Bengal state, said a private builder had missed several deadlines for completing the construction.
The contract for the overpass was signed in 2007 and it was expected to be completed in two years. Banerjee accused the previous communist government in West Bengal of not adhering to building regulations.
"We completed nearly 70 percent of the construction work without any mishap," said K.P. Rao, a top official of IVRCL Infrastructure, which was building the overpass. "We have to go into the details to find out whether the collapse was due to any technical or quality issue."
"It was a total act of God," said his colleague, Dilip, who uses only one name.
Building collapses are common in India, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction companies often use substandard materials.
Information for this article was contributed by Ashok Sharma and Prasanta Paul of The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/01/2016