Death toll in Mazgaon building collapse rises to 60

The death toll in the building collapse in Mumbai's Mazgaon area climbed to 60 on Sunday.

Deputy Commandant of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Sachidanad Gavde, said that special equipments were used to rescue victims, who were trapped under the rubble of the building that had collapsed on Friday.

"We have used special equipments in the operation and are now satisfied that there can be no more victims here. So, we are calling off the operation," he said.

The cause of the collapse of the building, where employees of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai were housed with their families, was still not known.

Rescue workers used six cranes to remove debris. The building was believed to have been about 35-years-old and home to about 20 families.

In April, a building collapse killed 72 people in Thane, just outside Mumbai. Officials later said the structure had been built using poor materials and did not have proper approvals.

A shortage of cheap homes has led to a rise in illegal construction by developers who use substandard materials and shoddy methods and then offer cheap rents to low-paid workers.

A rise in property prices in densely populated Mumbai over the past five years has put affordable housing out of reach of tens of thousands of people, many of them migrants who move to the city for work.