February 8, 2026 l Dalena Reporters
A five-story residential building collapsed in the impoverished Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood of the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Sunday, February 8, 2026, claiming at least five lives and trapping an unknown number of residents under rubble, authorities reported.
Security sources said rescue workers and local residents worked through the afternoon and evening searching the debris, recovering eight survivors from beneath the wreckage, including three people rescued alive by Sunday evening. The casualty figure confirmed by Lebanon’s National News Agency included both a child and an elderly woman.
The building, reportedly old and structurally weakened, was located in one of Tripoli’s poorest sectors, where ageing properties and inadequate maintenance have long raised safety concerns among residents and civil society groups. Images circulating in Lebanese media showed volunteers and emergency workers removing debris by hand, underscoring the limited heavy-rescue equipment available on site.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun ordered all emergency services to mobilise in support of the rescue operation and to provide temporary shelter for displaced residents and neighbours whose buildings were evacuated as a safety precaution. Authorities evacuated adjacent structures amid fears they too could collapse.
This incident comes amid a broader pattern of building failures and public safety risks in Tripoli, where decades of neglect, economic hardship and unregulated construction have left many residential blocks in advanced states of disrepair. Rights groups have repeatedly warned that large numbers of residents remain at risk due to informal building expansions and inadequate enforcement of building codes.
Officials have not yet released a full account of those still missing, and the search for additional survivors was ongoing at the time of reporting. Government and civil authorities are expected to conduct further assessments to determine the cause of the collapse as well as steps to prevent similar tragedies elsewhere in the city.