Morbi bridge collapse: Witnesses describe scene of tragedy

A bridge in the western Indian state of Gujarat collapsed on Sunday evening, killing at least 141 people. Officials say that several women, children and elderly people lost their lives in the incident.

People who were at the scene of the tragedy described their experience to the BBC.

A young man who was standing on the bridge with his six-year-old sister when it collapsed was inconsolable when he told BBC Gujarati that he was unable to find her.

“We were standing on the bridge. There were hundreds of people.”

“I climbed this bridge for the first time. My sister and I were taking photos on our mobile and suddenly, the bridge collapsed.”

“My sister and I fell in the water. I survived but my sister is still missing.”

He added, weeping, that he had been looking for her since Sunday evening.

“I went to the government hospital, searched everywhere, but my sister is nowhere to be found.”

Rameshbhai Jilaria, a local who rushed to the spot after the tragedy occurred, told BBC Gujarati that he helped pull bodies out of the water.

“When we heard the news, we immediately took a rope and rushed to the spot. When I reached there, 50-60 people were hanging on to the broken suspension bridge,” he says.

Mr Jilaria says he and others pulled out around 15 bodies from the river with the help of the rope.

“Three of the bodies were of young children.”

“My friends and I were sitting [near the bridge] after work,” Subhashbhai, a witness to the tragedy, told BBC Gujarati.

“There was a loud sound of the bridge breaking. We rushed to the spot and started rescuing people.”

“Some people were swimming but others were drowning.”

“We started pulling out the small children first. Then with the help of a pipe, we tried to rescue the adults.”

“We pulled eight-nine people out of the water and recovered two bodies,” he says.

Reporting by Tejas Vaidya, Roxy Gagdekar Chhara and Rajesh Ambalia for BBC Gujarati