Hopes fading for trapped Iran firefighters

Tehran : Iranian officials said Friday they were losing hope of pulling any survivors from the rubble of a collapsed Tehran high-rise where around 20 firefighters are feared to have lost their lives. 

Rescue workers, soldiers and sniffer dogs were still frantically searching through the wreckage of the 15-storey Plasco building in downtown Tehran, which collapsed on Thursday after a four-hour blaze.

But smouldering fires and smoke were complicating the search, and so far no survivors or bodies had been found. 

"It is very unlikely that we will pull anyone out alive from the rubble," the head of Tehran's crisis management centre, Esmail Najjar, told the ISNA news agency. 

"Our goal is to recover the bodies of these martyrs without causing any damage to the bodies," he added.

The Plasco building was Iran's oldest high-rise and contained a shopping centre and hundreds of clothing suppliers. 

"The removal of debris is more difficult than removing debris from a major earthquake because we are dealing with fire, smoke and lack of oxygen," said Red Crescent official Morteza Moradipour. 

"It is still not clear how many people are trapped under the rubble and not even one person has been pulled out," added Tehran emergency services director Pir Hossein Koolivand.