BERLIN: Rescue teams worked to free people trapped after part of a hotel collapsed in western Germany, killing one person and burying eight others, authorities said on Wednesday.
The rescue service already rescued a man, a child and two women from the building on Wednesday morning, a police spokesman told AFP.
The person who died has not yet been found, the spokesman added.
A floor at a hotel in Kroevo, a city about 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Frankfurt, collapsed for unknown reasons at around 11:00 pm (21:00 GMT) on Tuesday, police said in a statement.
Of the 14 people inside at the time, five managed to get out.
Some of those still incarcerated “were seriously injured,” police said.
Emergency services were able to make contact with some of them, but the operation was difficult “as the building could only be entered … with the utmost care”, the spokesman said.
Thirty-one residents from the local neighborhood were evacuated and about 250 search and rescue workers were on the scene.
Dutch media reported that a Dutch family of three was among those buried under the rubble.
The mother and child were pulled out alive, but the father was still trapped, the Dutch national news agency ANP reported. The family is said to have come from Urk, a small fishing town in the north of the Netherlands.
