agencies
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More than a dozen workers have been killed after a bridge under construction collapsed in northeast India on Wednesday, the latest in a string of infrastructure failures that have resulted in multiple deaths in the country.
The collapse of the bridge in the town of Sairang, Mizoram state, killed at least 26 people and injured several others, according to its chief minister, Zoramthanga, who goes by one name.
Video and photos posted by Zoramthanga to Twitter, now known as X, show the broken structure laying on the ground, with a thick plume of dust and smoke billowing in the air.
“Deeply saddened and affected by this tragedy,” he wrote. “I extend my deepest condolences to all the bereaved families and wishing a speedy recovery to the injured.”
The death toll is likely to increase as many more are reported missing. Railway officials said about 40 labourers were on the bridge at the time of its collapse.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in South Africa for the BRICS economic grouping summit, also offered his condolences to those killed in the incident.
“Pained by the bridge mishap in Mizoram,” Modi wrote on X, offering a sum of nearly $2,500 to the next of kin of those killed and $600 to the injured workers.
Mizoram is a hilly, mountainous state near India’s border with Bangladesh and Myanmar. Its villages and towns rely on a network of unsurfaced roads and single lane tracks, highways and bridges, for connectivity.
Tuesday’s collapse isn’t the first in recent months to make headlines in India, a country that has been rapidly transforming its infrastructure and spending millions to upgrade its transport network.
In June, a four-lane concrete bridge that was being built across the River Ganges in the eastern state of Bihar collapsed for the second time in just over a year, raising questions about the quality of its construction.
Last October, a recently repaired suspension bridge gave way in the town of Morbi in Gujarat, killing 135 people.
In 2016, the collapse of an overpass onto a busy street in Kolkata killed at least 26
people.
In 2011, at least 32 people were killed when a packed bridge collapsed in the hill resort of Darjeeling.
