A two-storey building has collapsed in the southern Indian city of Secunderabad, killing at least 12 people.
Local police said the City Light Hotel at a busy market street in Secunderabad, near Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh state, collapsed early Monday.
Twenty others were rescued and taken to a hospital. Police said it was not clear how many people were still trapped under the rubble of the hotel.
Authorities were still investigating the cause of the collapse. A spokesman for Hyderabad’s police commissioner said the building may have crashed down because it has already withered with time.
“The building was very old and the walls showed cracks, according to people working nearby,” senior police official B Surender told AFP.
Such incidents are common in India and are often blamed on poor construction practices.
The collapse on Monday follows a string of building disasters in the country in recent months, reports Wall Street Journal.
Last month, at least 10 people were killed after part of a five-storey building collapsed in Mumbai.
In another incident, a seven-floor apartment building in a Mumbai suburb collapsed in April, leaving 74 people dead.
