The bodies of two men and a woman have been discovered in the rubble of two dilapidated buildings that collapsed in the centre of Marseille on Monday, reports The Guardian.
The city prosecutor, Xavier Tarabeux, announced the discovery of a third body on Tuesday evening. Rescue workers had previously found the body of a man and a woman under the collapsed buildings.
“We are still looking at there being between five and eight victims; people of whom we have no news,” Tarabeux said.
The French interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said the rescue operation was “meticulous and delicate”, much of which had to be carried out by hand.
“The searchers have found some survival pockets so there is perhaps hope there may be people still alive,” he added.
About 80 firefighters were combing through the remains. A political row is brewing over the condition of the two buildings, with about 6,000 properties in Marseille in a dilapidated state, officials said.
Castaner said: “I am here to accompany the men and women trying to save lives. The polemic can come later, the investigation now. Everyone is trying to saving lives. That is the urgency. For as long as there is hope the fire service will continue to fight to save lives.”
The minister said the building that was occupied, No 65 rue d’Aubagne, had undergone a “technical inspection” on 18 October. While concerns about its state were raised, there was no decision to evacuate or stop anyone living there.
Renaud Muselier, the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, said: “Teams have worked through the night in difficult conditions. It’s been raining so it’s complicated. The one positive thing is that they have found potential breathing spaces.”
No 63 was derelict and supposedly empty but may have been occupied by squatters. It fell first, pulling down No 65, which was occupied, and partially damaging No 67, which fire services were forced to pull down entirely.
“The risk is that it’s a house of cards. It was a dilapidated building but there were owners and tenants there. It wasn’t a slum,” Muselier said.
The buildings gave way after 9am on Monday. Throughout the night, emergency services combed through the 15-metre-deep rubble left by the collapse.
Working all night, search teams removed parts of the building from the road under which they found a crushed car.
Muselier said that among the missing was a woman who had failed to collect her daughter from school and another woman who rarely left her home in the building.
Sophie, a 25-year-old philosophy student, who was living in one of the destroyed buildings, had stayed with her parents the night before the collapse. “For several days the doors to several flats wouldn’t close, or had difficulty closing, including mine. I was afraid of being imprisoned in my home with the door blocked,” she told AFP.