DUBAI (AFP) - Five workers were killed when part of a wall collapsed at a construction site for a new state-of-the-art terminal at Dubai's international airport, the Department of Civil Aviation said.
Workers, most of them believed to be expatriate Asian labourers, were trapped in the rubble when steel girders used to reinforce the wall of the building collapsed.
"Around 10:45 am (0645 GMT) this morning, during the preparation of a wall, a section of the reinforcement cage fell trapping workers. Emergency personnel responded immediately and rushed to the site," the DCA said in a statement.
"Twelve workers were rescued and sent to Rashid and Baraha hospitals with injuries while five succumbed in the incident," it added, without giving the nationalities of the casualties, believed to be expatriate Asian labourers.
The accident occurred on the site of Dubai International Airport's new terminal which has been designed by France's Aeroports de Paris (ADP) in the shape of a giant plane wing almost one kilometre (1,100 yards) in length.
The accident occurred five months after the collapse in May of part of a futurist new terminal at the ADP-operated Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which killed four passengers.
An ADP spokesman said from Paris that the company had "no role" in the construction work at the site where Monday's accident occurred.
Dubai airport, in the commercial hub of the United Arab Emirates, is being expanded at a cost of 4.1 billion dollars to include a third terminal passengers of Dubai-owned Emirates airline, as well as a cargo mega-terminal.
Labourers in Dubai, which is in the midst of a construction frenzy in its bid to become the region's business and leisure hub, work throughout soaring summer temperatures, which on Monday were near 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit).
A Pakistani worker who said he saw incident told an AFP correspondent at the scene that workers were trapped beneath the rubble and he could hear their screams for help.
A security official on the site said around 200 workers were in the immediate area at the time of the collapse, adding that the entire construction project involves more than 8,000 workers.
Dubai expects to handle annual traffic of about 30 million passengers by 2010 and more than 60 million by 2020. But fatal accidents on building sites are common, amid concerns over safety standards.
The DCA said Monday's collapse was "the first major incident to ever occur at Dubai International Airport during construction," adding that it had no impact on operations at the airport, one of the busiest in the Middle East,
"It is a tragic situation for all of us at the Department of Civil Aviation. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased workers. We will conduct a full investigation into the accident," said DCA president and Emirates' chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum.
"We would like to reinforce the fact that safety of all our people working at Dubai International Airport is top most priority," Sheikh Ahmed said.
UAE-British consortium Al-Naboodah Laing last year won a multi-million-dollar engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract under the four-billion-dollar airport expansion.
An executive with the consortium told AFP that work started on the site more than a year ago and that it is scheduled for completion in 2006.
The executive said he did not know how the accident happened and was awaiting an investigation. Other company officials at the accident site would not speak to reporters.
Buses could be seen ferrying scores of Asian workers off the site.
A one-kilometre (mile) section of the airport highway leading to the site was closed off to traffic for several hours after the incident.
The site itself and its vicinity was still cordoned off hours later.
Passenger traffic at the airport rose by 27 percent in the first half of this year to 10.41 million people.