Abadan: At least 11 people were killed when an under-construction 10-storey building collapsed in the southwestern city of Abadan in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. 39 people were injured.

Iranian media reported that at least 50 people were trapped under the rubble. The rescue operation is continuing.

The Metropol Building included two towers, one already built and the other under construction, though its bottom commercial floors had finished and already had tenants.

On Tuesday, an emergency official interviewed on state television suggested that some 50 people may have been inside of the building at the time of the collapse, including people moving into its basement floors.

However, it wasn’t clear if that figure included those already pulled from the rubble. “At least 39 people were injured, most of them lightly,” officials earlier said.

Aerial drone footage aired on Tuesday showed the floors had pancaked on top of each other, leaving a pile of dusty, gray debris. A construction crane stood still nearby as a single backhoe dug.

An angry crowd at the site chased and beat Abadan Mayor Hossein Hamidpour immediately after the collapse, according to the semiofficial ILNA news agency and online videos.

Police later arrested Mr. Hamidpour and nine others, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. Initially, authorities said the building's owner and its general contractor had been arrested as well, though a later report from the judiciary's Mizan news agency said on Tuesday that the two men had been killed in the collapse. The conflicting reports could not be immediately reconciled.

Authorities offered no immediate word on whether those detained faced charges and it wasn't immediately clear if lawyers represented them.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi offered his condolences and appealed to the local authorities to get to the bottom of the case. Iran’s Vice-President in-charge of economic affairs, Mohsen Razaei, and Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi visited the site.