AN apartment building collapsed Sunday in Poland’s western city of Poznan, killing four people and injuring 24 others, officials said as firefighters and rescuers with dogs combed the rubble in search of more victims.

The building contained 18 apartments and housed 40 residents, according to firefighters’ spokesman Slawomir Brandt, who gave the death toll.

Polish TV channel TVP INFO showed part of a four-story building in a heap and rescuers checking the debris in sub-freezing temperatures. The search was expected to continue until later yesterday.

Police and prosecutors questioned witnesses at the site.

“We heard this loud bang and then terrible cries from people ‘Save us! Save us!,’” ground floor resident Krzysztof Sledz told state news agency PAP. “My wife and I dressed and left the apartment to help the neighbors.”

Sledz said they pulled their neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter from a bed strewn with rubble.

“I thought she was dead, she was blue. But they say she is in hospital,” Sledz said.

(SD-Agencies)