In the popular holiday city of Marseille on the Mediterranean, a building collapsed on Easter Vigil.
Emergency services recover last victims.
Surveillance camera footage has emerged.
Update from April 13, 7:31 a.m
.: After the building collapsed in downtown Marseille, the last victims have been recovered.
This was reported by the AFP news agency.
The death toll has risen to eight.
All occupants of the house are dead.
On Sunday night, a four-story house collapsed on Rue de Tivoli in Marseille's fifth arrondissement.
Parts of the two neighboring houses were also torn down.
A few hours later, one of the houses next to it collapsed.
The reason for the collapse was probably an explosion, probably a gas explosion.
Footage from a surveillance camera on Rue de Tivoli shows a massive explosion that appears to be coming from the lower floors of the building.
The sequence is available
to French broadcaster
BFMTV
.
Despite the darkness of the Easter Vigil, the blast wave can be seen affecting neighboring buildings and upper floors collapsing.
Five people from neighboring buildings were injured in the accident.
More than 30 houses were evacuated as a precaution.
"Terrible tragedy" in the Mediterranean: house collapses - rescue becomes a "race against time"
Update from April 10, 9:15 p.m .:
At least six people died when a residential building collapsed in the French port city of Marseille.
According to the fire department, two people are still missing on Monday evening.
The search for them continues in the dark.
Five people in neighboring houses were injured and almost 200 people had to leave their homes.
A gas explosion is believed to have caused the building to collapse.
On Monday, around a hundred rescue workers, supported by dogs, drones and heat probes, searched for people who had been buried.
A fire smoldering in the rubble made the rescue operation difficult.
The chief of the Marseille fire brigade, Lionel Mathieu, said the fire had not raged in all parts of the building, there was "hope that people are still alive".
He described the rescue operation as a "race against time".
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Firefighters work in the rubble of a building in downtown Marseille.
After the collapse of a building in downtown Marseille, emergency services are working hard to find people under the rubble.
© Clement Mahoudeau/dpa
Investigations into the cause of the fire continued.
According to initial findings, the authorities assumed that gas could have caused the explosion.
A resident of the neighborhood told the AFP news agency: "We quickly noticed a strong smell of gas (...) which we still smelled this morning."
“Terrible tragedy” in the Mediterranean: house collapses, followed by “rare fire phenomenon” – four dead
Update from April 10, 2:19 p.m .
: A four-storey building collapsed in the night of Easter Sunday in downtown Marseille.
Rescuers are looking for suspected victims in the rubble.
Eight residents have been missing since the accident.
Two other bodies were recovered dead from the remains of the home on Monday.
This increases the death toll to at least four.
"As long as there is hope of finding people alive, we will not stop," said Marseille Mayor Benoît Payan on Monday morning.
However, he had already admitted on Sunday evening that the hope of finding people alive under the rubble was vanishingly small.
It is still unclear whether other people were in the building in addition to the eight known residents.
French media reports of a "gigantic explosion" in which parts of neighboring houses were destroyed.
A neighboring building collapsed a few hours later.
The cause of the devastating explosion is still unclear.
The building was stable, had been maintained and had no known structural defects, Deputy Mayor Julien Cochet said, according to
BFMTV
.
The situation on the ground is dramatic.
Residents from neighboring houses were evacuated as a precaution.
206 people are affected by the measures, it is said.
50 people, including seven children, were accommodated in hotels.
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After a building collapse in Marseille: emergency services are looking for missing people in the rubble.
© CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/afp
House collapse in Marseille: rescue workers recover two bodies – several people are missing
Update from April 10, 7.40 a.m .:
Around 24 hours after a building collapsed in downtown Marseille, emergency services found two dead under the rubble on Monday night.
In view of the difficult situation, the salvage of the bodies should take some time, French media reported, citing the fire brigade.
A fire several meters below the rubble made the rescue work considerably more difficult.
It was initially unclear whether the dead were two of the eight missing.
According to the information, eight people lived in the building.
According to Marseille's prosecutor Dominique Laurens, there had been no news of them so far.
People would not have answered calls.
Relatives had contacted the authorities with concern.
The presumably buried people are mostly older people and a couple in their 30s. Children were probably not in the building when it collapsed.
A man from a neighboring house could also be under the rubble.
His ex-girlfriend stated that she had not reached him after the accident.
Five people from neighboring buildings were injured in the collapse on Sunday night.
About 30 houses were evacuated as a precaution.
Marseille Mayor Benoît Payan said on Sunday evening on BFMTV that there was still hope of rescuing people alive, but it was vanishingly small.
You will keep fighting.
When the four-storey house on Rue Tivoli in Marseille's fifth arrondissement collapsed, parts of the two neighboring houses were also torn down.
A few hours later, one of the houses next to it collapses completely.
The reason for the collapse was probably an explosion.
Marseille: Eight missing after residential building collapses
Update from April 9, 8:04 p.m .:
After the collapse of a residential building in the French port city of Marseille on the Mediterranean Sea, eight people are currently missing.
"Eight people lived in the building and it is these eight people that we currently have no news of," Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens said on Sunday evening.
The presumably buried people are therefore mostly older people and a couple around 30. Children were probably not in the building.
Five people in neighboring houses were injured in the collapse that was probably caused by a gas explosion on Sunday night.
The fire brigade has been on site since shortly before 1 a.m.
There was a fire under the rubble, which made rescue work difficult.
"We must prepare for the fact that there will be fatalities in this terrible tragedy," said Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille.
An eyewitness named Aziz, who declined to give his last name, told
AFP
it was an "explosion" that "shook everything".
"We saw people running, there was smoke everywhere, the building collapsed onto the street," said the man, who says he runs a late-night grocery store on the street where the collapsed building is located.
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Firefighters work in the rubble of a building in downtown Marseille.
After the collapse of a building in downtown Marseille, emergency services are working hard to find people under the rubble.
© Clement Mahoudeau/dpa
Rescue drama in the Mediterranean: explosion causes residential complex to collapse, then fire breaks out
First report from April 9:
Marseille – On Easter night, a residential building collapsed in the French city of Marseille.
The emergency services are searching under high pressure for people under the rubble.
However, this is anything but easy, because a fire has broken out under the rubble and is making rescue work more difficult.
"We think there are between four and ten people under the rubble," said French Interior Minister Geráld Darmanin on Sunday, assessing the situation in the Mediterranean port city.
According to initial investigations, at least five people were injured in a neighboring building.
To be on the safe side, the residents of around 30 surrounding residential buildings were evacuated.
Fire after building collapse in Marseille: "We don't know if they are alive or dead"
It is unclear exactly how many people are under the rubble of the four-storey house on Rue Tivoli.
"Four people appear to have been inside the building for sure," Darmanin said.
"We don't know if they are alive or dead." The reason for the collapse in the night was probably an explosion, and parts of the neighboring houses were also torn down.
"We cannot yet know today what caused this very large explosion," said the interior minister.
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Rescue workers work at the site of a collapsed building in the southern French port city of Marseille early Sunday morning.
© Nicolas Tucat/dpa
Fire after building collapse in Marseille: Are faced with "very rare phenomenon"
The fire that started shortly after the collapse was still burning Sunday afternoon.
"We are facing a very rare phenomenon - a fire that has been going on for several hours with extremely high temperatures," said Mayor Benoît Payan.
The use of water or foam should not prevent the buried victims from surviving.
Rescue dogs would also find it difficult to search for the buried people, it said.
The smell of burning and the high temperatures make the work difficult.
The four-legged friends have not found any human traces so far, said Payan.
But that means nothing.
"We cannot draw any conclusions from this at the moment." (kas/dpa)
Just last year, two houses collapsed in Lille, France.
After hours of searching, firefighters were able to recover a victim from under the rubble.
List of rubrics: © Clement Mahoudeau/afp/dpa
