LAHORE, Nov 14: A father-of-nine was killed while three other persons including a woman were injured when a three-storey building collapsed at a fruit market in Kot Lakhpat here on Thursday, police and eyewitnesses said.

Fruit-seller Nazar Mohammad (55), two of his employees, Nasir (23) and Shera (50) and a customer Sakina (45), were buried under the rubble.

Police, civil defence volunteers, the fire-brigade and other rescue agencies recovered the buried people with the help of local shopkeepers who had already started removing the debris.

Nazar, Nasir, Sakina and Shera were shifted to the Lahore General Hospital where Shera was pronounced dead on arrival. The condition of the remaining was stated to be critical.

Shera, a resident of Kahna, is survived by a wife and nine children.

The injured, Nazar and Nasir, belonged to Sargodha and Sakina, who had came to see her relatives in Lahore, belonged to Kahna.

Eyewitnesses said the building, which had a fruit shop on its ground floor, caved in all of a sudden. They voiced fear that more people might be buried under the rubble, saying that not all of those present in the shop at the time of the incident had yet been recovered from the debris.

They said the building collapsed as excavation for construction of a shop adjacent to it had weakened its foundations.

One Mohammad Khan, who owns a tea-stall near the collapsed building said that Mr Nazar had asked the owner of the adjacent under-construction shop to stop excavation. He said that a labourer digging the earth might also have been trapped in the debris.

The body was shifted to the city mortuary for autopsy. No case has been registered in this regard.

The rescue operation was in progress and no more bodies had been recovered till the filing of this report at 9.30pm.