January 22-2016
Tehran’s Fire Department said 15 men and one woman were pulled out of the rubble after an old building used as synagogue collapsed in the capital.
Jalal Maleki, the department spokesman, told the Tasnim news agency the firefighters were called after the collapse early Friday morning.
Units from two stations were dispatched, and managed to rescue 16 Jews trapped under the rubble of the synagogue, he said. No one was reported killed.
The entrapped people got out of the building unharmed, but the collapse crushed three cars parked in front of the building, he said. The Torah scrolls were retrieved virtually unscathed.
The two-story building was a very old one with cracks all over the walls, Maleki said. Media reports quoted another firefighter as saying the owner had been doing excavations under the building, weakening the walls.
A Jewish witness said he had already warned the owner of the imminent collapse and urged him to stop the excavation. “If the incident would have occurred tomorrow [Saturday], which is our Sabbath, there would have been the possibility of fatalities due to the presence of 250 people,” Tasnim quoted the witness as saying.