PANAJI, India (AFP) - Six labourers were killed and more than 40 were believed trapped when a building under construction collapsed in a coastal village in the Indian tourist state of Goa on Saturday, police said.

"We have recovered six bodies from the site," Mr Shekhar Prabhudesai, local superintendent of police, told AFP, adding that more than 40 construction workers were feared trapped under the wreckage.

The residential building caved in mid-afternoon, when around 50 labourers were working on the site, the police superintendent said.

The building collapse, the latest of a string of deadly cave-ins in India recently, occurred in the seaside village of Canacona, south of the capital city of Panaji.