The Director of the Civil Defense Directorate, Brigadier General Hatem Yaqoub, said that there are still people in the basement of the building that collapsed.

Yaqoub added in a press briefing, Thursday, from the site of the collapse, that rescue teams will not leave the site before everyone is pulled out from underneath the rubble.

“We have to assume that all those under the rubble are still alive,” he said.

There are indications that the stability of the building was disturbed which makes the work of the rescue teams harder out of fear of another collapse happening after a vibration occurred in the main node of the ground floor, Yaqoub added.

He pointed out that there are signs of hope that there will be one or more survivors after an oxygen cylinder was inserted under the ruins of the building, and that the number of trapped people is four, one of whom is in the upper part and three in the lower part as they lived in a stand-alone house adjacent to the collapsed building.

Notably, each eight-hour shift for the rescue teams makes up over 250 people, he said.