HANOI, Jan 19 — A 15-year-old girl was killed when a convenience store collapsed in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday, with rescue workers blaming an overload of stock ahead of lunar new year.

At least one more person was thought to be trapped inside the two-storey Circle-K shop, state media said, after eight others escaped from the ground floor.

"Paramedics gave the girl CPR in the ambulance as we rushed her to hospital. But we were informed by the hospital that she died,” Nguyen Duy Long, head of the southern business hub’s ambulance service, told AFP.

Photos of the site showed a large amount of soft drinks, milk and other goods in a heap outside the store after they were pulled out by rescue workers searching for victims.

Earlier this month, authorities declared a 10-year-old boy dead after four days trapped in a buried hollow concrete pillar at a construction site in the Mekong Delta’s Dong Thap province.

Rescuers have yet to pull up the pillar with the boy’s body inside. — AFP