At least 16 students were killed on Friday when a school in central Nigeria collapsed on pupils taking exams, according to an AFP correspondent.

Trapped students were heard crying for help under the rubble after the Saint Academy school in Jos North district of Plateau State fell in on classrooms.

Mechanical diggers tried to rescue the victims while parents desperately looked for their children.

Officials have so far only said “several students” were killed but an AFP reporter saw five dead bodies in one hospital morgue and 11 in another. All were wearing school uniforms.

With his mother at his hospital bedside, injured student Wulliya Ibrahim told AFP: “I entered the class not more than five minutes when I heard a sound, and the next thing is I found myself here.”

“We are many in the class, we are writing our exams,” he said.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said the two-storey building housing Saint Academy collapsed killing “several students” without giving details.

“NEMA and other critical stakeholders are presently carrying out Search and Rescue operations,” it said.

A resident at the scene Chika Obioha told AFP he saw at least eight bodies at the site and that dozens more had been injured.

“Everyone is helping out to see if we can rescue more people,” he said.

The AFP correspondent said he saw 11 bodies in the morgue at the Bingham University Teaching Hospital and five dead taken into the mortuary at the Our Lady of Apostles Hospital in Jos.

At least 15 rescued and injured students were admitted, officials at the Our Lady of Apostles Hospital said.

Officials at the Bingham University Teaching Hospital did not comment.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse but residents said it came after three days of heavy rains in Plateau.

Building collapses are fairly common in Africa’s most populous nation because of lax enforcement of building standards, negligence and use of low-quality materials.

At least 45 people were killed in 2021 when a high-rise building under construction collapsed in the upscale Ikoyi district in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos.

Ten people were killed when a three-storey building collapsed in the Ebute-Metta area of Lagos the year after.

Since 2005, at least 152 buildings have collapsed in Lagos, according to a South African university researcher investigating construction disasters.

Bad workmanship, low-quality materials and corruption to bypass official oversight are often blamed for Nigerian building disasters.