Five die in lift shaft

Hong Kong, September 13: Five workers died on Sunday after plunging more than a dozen floors down a lift shaft in Hong Kong’s tallest skyscraper and the fourth tallest building in the world, police and local reports said.

A police spokesperson said emergency workers called to the International Commerce Centre in Kowloon’s popular Tsim Sha Tsui area removed three injured workers, who were all certified dead on arrival at hospital.

Firemen later recovered the bodies of two other workers while another was thought to be missing.

According to a local broadcaster, the workers were believed to have been working on a platform in a lift shaft on the 27th floor when it suddenly gave way and fell to the 10th floor.

The 118-floor skyscraper, developed by MTR Corporation and Sun Hung Kai Properties, is Hong Kong’s tallest building and is due to open next year.

It is the fourth tallest building in the world after the Burj in Dubai, Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the Shanghai World Financial Centre.

—Agencies