Security footage 'shows the moment balcony collapses at Jakarta stock exchange as large group of students are being given a tour, injuring 80 people'....
Dramatic footage circulating on social media appears to show the moment a balcony collapsed at the Indonesian stock exchange today as a large group of students were being given a tour.
The CCTV clip appears to show people plunging to the lobby below along with a cascade of glass, metal and rubble as the structure gave way.
Many of them are understood to have been university students from Palembang in Sumatra. Several other people were walking beneath the walkway as it crashed down inside the building in Jakarta.
Officials say 80 people have been injured in the collapse. Pictures show huge slabs of concrete on the ground and victims being treated at the scene.
The high-rise building, constructed in the late 1990s, is part of a two-tower complex also housing offices of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
It was the target of a car bombing by Islamist militants in September 2000. Police ruled out a bomb as a cause of the collapse and described the incident as an accident.
There was no immediate explanation for the collapse. Footage showed several people lying on the ground or being carried outside the building.
Images aired on television and circulated on social media showed a concrete and metal structure that had collapsed around a Starbucks cafe near the entrance to the lobby of the building with blue-tinted windows.
A spokesman for Jakarta's Siloam Hospital had earlier said it received 28 people from the tower, and the seriousness of the injuries was still being assessed. However the number of those now known to be injured has since increased.
Jakarta police said there were no reports of deaths. A spokesman told Metro TV: 'We are still investigating the cause, but for now our priorities are the casualties.'
TV news footage showed people panicking and screaming as officials tried to evacuate the area amid piles of debris.
A reporter from Metro TV, who was in the building to cover the stock market, said the incident happened shortly after noon local time (5am UK time).
'There was a loud banging so people who were inside immediately ran outside of the building,' said journalist Marlia Zein.
'Slabs of concrete started to fall, there was lots of dust. Water pipes had burst,' said Megha Kapoor, who works in the building and was in the lobby at the time.
'I heard a loud cracking sound. I saw a lady unconscious stuck under slab of concrete,' she said, adding that the collapsed level was just above the reception desk.
She said there had been group of high school students on the level when it started collapsing.
The structure appeared to be an internal balcony or mezzanine floor. It collapsed on to the ground level of the complex's second tower.
An Indonesian Stock Exchange spokesman told Bloomberg confirmed that there had not been an explosion.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said she hoped the collapse would not affect investor confidence in the tropical Southeast Asian archipelago. The exchange resumed business in the afternoon as per schedule.
The Indonesia Stock Exchange is located in the centre of Jakarta, and the local office of the World Bank is also housed on the 12th floor of the complex.
Safety standards are often loosely enforced in Indonesia. Last year, a fire that ripped through a fireworks factory on the outskirts of Jakarta killed around 50 people in one of the country's worst industrial accidents. A police investigation found multiple safety violations.
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