At least 20 employees were killed in western India on Tuesday when a crane toppled above an under-construction motorway near Mumbai, according to disaster response officials.
The crane fell onto massive concrete slabs during the night when workers building the Samruddhi Expressway in Maharashtra state were working, according to India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).
The NDRF said late Tuesday that 20 dead had been recovered and three individuals had been injured and sent to the hospital.
An NDRF video clip showed rescuers crawling through heaps of damaged steel girders at the Thane construction site in Mumbai’s outskirts.
The highway, which connects Mumbai and Nagpur, is part of a massive road infrastructure push in one of the world’s fastest expanding economies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was set to inaugurate infrastructure projects in Maharashtra on Tuesday, said he was “pained” by the killings and ordered that compensation be paid to the relatives of the deceased and injured workers.
In India, accidents on huge infrastructure construction projects are prevalent.
In October of last year, 130 people were killed in Gujarat when a bridge collapsed shortly after it had been repaired.
In 2016, at least 26 people were murdered when an overpass collapsed into a busy street in Kolkata.
