France: 3 Found Dead in Collapsed Buildings, Search Goes On

Firefighters in the southern French city of Marseille found the bodies of three people in the ruins of two collapsed buildings as the search for victims and survivors continued Tuesday.

A man’s body was recovered from the rubble after the bodies of another man and a woman were found earlier in the day, a spokesman for the Marseille Firefighters told The Associated Press.

Several people remained missing after the adjacent multi-story structures collapsed Monday.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said “air pockets” under the debris meant there’s “hope to locate and find someone that can be saved.”

Castaner said at the site that 120 police officers and 80 firefighters took part in the search-and-rescue operation, working through the night in the pile of beams and rubble.

The two buildings, one apparently vacant and the other housing apartments, collapsed Monday at 9 a.m. local time. Authorities said the vacant building had been deemed substandard. It was not immediately clear why they collapsed, or how many people the apartment building housed.

Fire crews working with sniffer dogs later brought down the remains of a third building they feared could topple over on them.

Images of the buildings before they collapsed showed that one had five floors and the other six. In the spot where they had stood, a large gap appeared once the dust and debris settled.

Cars around Marseille’s famous Old Port on the Mediterranean Sea, were covered with thick dust.

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