LAHORE, Oct 27: Nine persons, including seven women and an infant, were buried alive under the debris after the collapse of a two-storey building near the Samanabad Morr on the Multan Road on Monday.

The dead included four members of a family as well as a labourer.

Eyewitnesses said that the building collapsed after the removal of the ground floor walls.

The building was owned by two brothers, Zahid Nazeer and Tahir Saleem, whose families lived on the upper storey. They had sold four shops on the ground floor to one, Saeed Shah, who wanted to merge them into a single shop.

Mr Zahid and Mr Saleem tried to refrain Mr Shah from doing so but, instead of listening to them, he hired a contractor, Mr Usman, who began removing walls of the shops on Sunday night. Three labourers, who had been hired to do the job, had just removed two of the walls when the building collapsed. Two of them managed to save themselves.

Bodies of Mr Zahid’s wife Ms Uzma, their two-year-old daughter Laiba, Mr Tahir’s wife Ms Neelam, their mother-in-law Bilquis Begum, and two house maids Kausar, and Shazia, and Sumaira, and Bali, were pronounced dead on arrival at various hospitals. The maid died later.