NAIROBI, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese disaster rescue team has detected signs of life beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, raising hopes of locating survivors as joint rescue operations continue, officials said Tuesday.
Anthony Muchiri, emergency operations manager of the Kenya Red Cross and the official in charge of the organization's operations at the site, told Xinhua that members of Blue Sky Rescue, a Chinese humanitarian disaster relief organization, have detected two distinct life signals deep beneath concrete slabs and twisted metal.
"By using the specialized equipment from China, rescuers have narrowed their search to specific locations, replacing the previous approach of clearing broad areas of debris," Muchiri said.
Blue Sky Rescue rescuers arrived at the site on Monday with specialized life-detection equipment, including high-precision radar life detectors, seismic acoustic sensors, and snake cameras.
Zhang Yuran of Blue Sky Rescue said that the team had been conducting life-search work and cooperating with several rescue teams on site.
He added that rescuers had begun clearing access routes to reach the two locations where signs of life had been detected.
Machinery provided by Chinese companies has also supported the rescue operation.
William Sifuna Watitwa, a staff officer for the Nairobi North sub-region, said that China's Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group had provided an excavator and a 25-tonne crane to support the search efforts.
"The excavator played an instrumental role in rescuing two people trapped beneath the debris on Saturday," Watitwa said.
The Kenya Red Cross said on Tuesday evening that 20 people remained missing.
The multi-story building collapsed on Friday in Eastleigh, a high-density commercial and residential suburb in Nairobi.
