At least 20 workers were killed on Tuesday when a crane fell on a highway under construction in western India, on the outskirts of Bombay, according to authorities.
It fell overnight on a large concrete slab, throwing up debris that killed workers at the construction site for the Samruddhi highway in Maharashtra state, the National Disaster Response Agency said. .
Twenty bodies were recovered and three injured people were taken to hospital, he added.
The tragedy occurred in Thane, a suburb of Bombay, India’s economic capital.
Images released by the agency show emergency services searching the site, which is littered with deformed metal beams.
The Samruddhi highway, which is supposed to connect Bombay and Nagpur, is part of a grand plan to build road infrastructure in the fast-developing country.
AFP
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was due to inaugurate another infrastructure project in the same state on Tuesday, said he was “devastated” and ordered that compensation be paid to the families of workers who died or were injured.
Accidents like this are common in India.
In October 2022, 130 people died in the (northwestern) state of Gujarat when a bridge collapsed that had just been repaired.
In 2016, the collapse of a highway bridge on a busy street in Calcutta killed at least 26 people.
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