JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa says a total of 115 people, including 84 South Africans, died in the Sept. 12 collapse of a building at a church complex in Nigeria.
Phumla Williams, a South African government spokeswoman, said Monday that South African officials in Nigeria provided the updated death toll. Williams spoke after a plane carrying South Africans who were injured in the disaster arrived in South Africa.
Ibrahim Farinloye, spokesman for the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency, says he cannot confirm the South African government report of 115 dead. Last week, Farinloye reported a death toll of 86.
The fallen multistory building served as a shopping mall and guesthouse at the sprawling campus of televangelist T.B. Joshua’s Synagogue, Church of All Nations, on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.
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