21 injured in shopping centre collapse

Part of the top floor of a shopping centre collapsed on to an ice rink crowded with children, police in Pretoria, South Africa said. Twenty-one people were injured, some seriously.

In the chaos of the first few minutes, parents desperately tried to dig their children out of the rubble.

Police said three people were in hospital with critical injuries and 18 others with serious injuries.

A spokeswoman for the mall said an eight-month-old girl briefly trapped in the rubble was rescued and was in a stable condition with cuts and bruises.

About 300 police and soldiers joined the rescue effort, looking for people feared trapped beneath the rubble. Ambulances rushed to the scene along with police and military helicopters.

‘‘It was much like the World Trade Centre - dense dust and people running,’’ said Dr George Michael Scharfs, who was near the rink with his wife and children when the first floor of Kolonnade Shopping Centre fell onto the skating rink.

‘‘I’m a surgeon so I went in to try to pull out other people", said Scharfs. He said he helped rescue a two-year-old girl pinned under a steel post. He said the girl was stable but had suffered a leg injury.

Witnesses said some children where bleeding badly as they were taken away on stretchers. The serious injuries included fractures, concussions and lacerations. Many were cut by shards from a shattered glass wall at the rink.

Authorities at first thought up to 50 people could be trapped in the debris. However, by last night police dogs were no longer finding the scent of anyone trapped beneath the debris. Police said they would continue the search until they were sure no-one was still beneath the rubble.

Rescue workers pulled tables from nearby restaurants and lined them across the rubble in the hopes it would leave passageways for rescue workers if more of the two-storey building fell on top of the tables.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse of the newly constructed section above the skating rink.

Gerna van Rooyen, a spokeswoman for the mall, said it was not yet clear what caused the collapse of a 25-square-metre section of the ceiling above the ice rink. She said that section was newly constructed and opened in October.

‘‘We heard a hell of a boom. At first we thought it was an earthquake,’’ said Aubrey Welken, 68, who was playing at a bingo parlour close to the rink.

He said he rushed to the rink and helped pull two eight - or nine-year-old girls from the rubble, including one with what appeared to be a broken leg.

‘‘They were hysterical. It just breaks your heart,’’ said Welken, beginning to cry.

Anxious parents and other family members gathered outside the centre waiting for word of missing loved ones.

‘‘My son is somewhere and we don’t know where ... it is chaotic here,’’ Marius du Plessis, 46, a Pretoria businessman, said during the early hours of the rescue effort. He said his 21-year-old son Morne, managed a clothing store on the second floor above the rink.

‘‘People don’t know what is going on, so we just have to wait,’’ he said.

However, four and a half hours after the collapse, the search appeared nearly over. Paramedics and some rescue workers began to leave the scene, believing they had accounted for all the people inside the rink at the time of the collapse.