Murder at the Synagogue: Death toll hits 80...TB Joshua reluctant to release names of victims

TB Joshua and the collapsed building

Six days after a five-storey building used as guest house by the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN collapsed, killing scores of persons and injuring several others, the church was yet to produce names of  lodgers in the building.
Although the South African government had Tuesday claimed that 67 of its citizens perished in the collapsed building but rescue operators are faced with the challenge of identifying the nationalities of the dead and survivors, owing to what they alleged as reluctance from SCOAN to produce the names.
Besides, indication emerged that some countries, among which is Australia, have been calling in to ascertain the plight of their citizens feared might be victims.
Death toll now 80
This is as the death toll rose to 80 yesterday with the recovery of additional 17 victims comprising 12 women and five men, with the number of survivors still 131.

Fielding questions from newsmen on the contradiction in the number of death between rescue operators and President Jacob Zuma of  South Africa,  the South West spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA  Ibrahim Farinloye, maintained that as at Tuesday, when Zuma came up with his figure, the death toll was 63.
Farinloye said, “I don’t know where President Zuma got his information from. He is not on ground here but we are. So, we presume he is operating based on  information made available to him. We are working on what we got based on operation. As I speak, we have record of 80 persons dead and 131 rescued alive. The figure rose to 80 because we recovered two bodies by 11pm on Tuesday and another two at about 3am today (Wednesday) and the rest between 10am and 4pm. We will continue working until we get to the last level of excavation because it is possible  that more bodies are still trapped underneath the rubble.
On list of victims
However, a member of the church, who spoke on condition on anonymity to Vanguard, assured that SCOAN was likely to come out with the list today.
The worker said:”We were overwhelmed by the incident. And we were fully involved in the rescue. I assure you that we will come out with the list by tomorrow (today) because there is no way you can hide the corpses, as some of them need to be flown to their respective countries”.

Vanguard