TEHRAN: Tehran’s mayor said more than 20 firefighters had been killed when the city’s oldest high-rise collapsed following a fire on Thursday.

“So far, more than 20 of our colleagues in the fire brigade have lost their lives rescuing others,” mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told Iranian state television.

Fire brigade spokesman Jalal Maleki said he could not confirm the 20 deaths, and they were still being treated officially as missing since no bodies had yet been pulled from the rubble.

Rescue workers, soldiers and sniffer dogs were desperately hunting for survivors in the debris of the 15-storey Plasco building, which contained a shopping centre and hundreds of clothing suppliers.

The Plasco building was Tehran’s first shopping centre and Iran’s tallest building when it was finished in 1962, before being dwarfed by the construction boom of later years.

It was built by Habibollah Elghanian, a prominent Iranian-Jewish businessman who was arrested for ties to Israel and sentenced to death and executed after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Some 78 people — mostly firefighters — were injured as they rushed to evacuate the building, the head of Tehran’s emergency services told state television, and six were still in hospital by late evening.

Dramatic images showed flames pouring out of the top floors of the building, which collapsed shortly before midday after a four-hour blaze.

Around 200 firefighters had been tackling the blaze at the Plasco building, which dated from the 1960s.

“I was inside and suddenly I felt the building is shaking and is about to collapse. As we gathered colleagues and got out, a minute later the building collapsed,” said Ali, a firefighter at the scene.

Local media said the workshops were especially full of clothes in the build-up to Nowruz, the Iranian New Year which falls in March.

President Hassan Rouhani demanded an immediate investigation, calling the incident “unfortunate and sorrowful”.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017