BBC Friday, 25 May, 2001, 02:10 GMT 03:10 UK

Death toll mounts in Jerusalem collapse

Rescuers have been grappling at the debris with their bare hands

At least 25 people have been killed and another 300 injured after a reception hall in Jerusalem collapsed during a wedding celebration.

But many more - possibly hundreds - are trapped in the rubble and rescuers believe the number of fatalities will rise dramatically in the coming hours.

Up to 1,000 people were celebrating on the top floor of the three-storey building when the ceiling gave way, sending people, tables and chairs plunging through the second floor to the ground, witnesses said.

A police spokesman said the incident did not appear to have been caused by a bomb or an explosion.

Israeli police intelligence chief David Tzuri told AFP news agency the collapse was due to an "engineering failure".

Distraught

Jerusalem police chief Micky Levy said: "We have dead, we have trapped people, but I can't confirm the numbers." He added that several children were among the dead.

Signs of life from people trapped under the rubble have been detected, but it could take up to three days to rescue all the people trapped, said Mr Levy.

BBC correspondent Orla Guerin described the scene as one of widespread devastation, with rescue workers grappling at the debris with bare hands.

"It really is and extraordinary scene, I'm standing right at the side of the building, and there is a gaping hole, four storeys high right though the structure," she said.

Bride in hospital

Wedding guest Yochi Bar-Zani said: "There was no blast. The floor opened up under me. I saw my brothers fall inside and I fell on top of them."

Shmuel Dimant, 27, blood streaming down his face, said: "Three floors and the ceiling fell down."

Another witness told Israeli television that he had seen people flying through the air.

One man described how he fell holding the hand of his 10-year-old son. He said they were both rescued from beneath the rubble.

"'Daddy, don't be frightened. I'm with you'," he said his son told him. "Then we fell through one floor and another."

Sara Pinhas, a relative of the groom, said dancers had lifted the father of the bride on a chair, a traditional part of the celebration, when suddenly he fell.

"Then we felt the whole building collapse, everything fell down. We managed to climb down the side of the building," she said.

The bride was taken to Bikur Holim hospital in downtown Jerusalem.

The groom's father, his leg in a cast, told reporters that the bride and groom were not seriously injured.

Ambulances at the scene in Jerusalem's Talpiot industrial park have been ferrying dozens of injured to local hospitals where relatives, desperately seeking news of their loved ones, were gathering.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

Answers

I remember reading last year before the Israeli elections how intensely corrupt the political system is there. Shoddy building construction is an example of what I would expect on the local level, although you would think the Israeli would know better.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

ET

Owners of 'unsafe' building held over 23 wedding deaths
By Alan Philps, in Jerusalem

GRIEF turned to anger in Israel yesterday after experts alleged that the wedding hall that collapsed, killing at least 23 of the guests, was of substandard design. Police arrested eight people responsible for the building.

Israeli media reported that the owners had removed four structural pillars to pack more people into the hall. Rescuers with sniffer dogs combed the rubble of the Versailles Hall in Jerusalem last night looking for possible survivors after the collapse on Thursday night.

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, declared it a "national tragedy". Officials said 23 of the 650 guests died when they plunged three storeys after the dance floor caved in. At least 300 were injured and 12 were missing in the mass of shattered concrete.

The rescuers promised to keep working for five days to sift the rubble and the chief rabbi authorised them to keep working through the Jewish Sabbath, which began last night. However, no live victims have been brought out since dawn yesterday and the sniffer dogs have found no trace of life.

Jerusalem police said last night that they had arrested the four owners of the wedding hall: an engineer, two contractors and a businessman who sold the flooring. Major Shaul Nevo, an army structural engineer and member of the rescue team, said the floor was of substandard design.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, said he suspected that building regulations had been flouted. The floor was made of a lightweight concrete design that was common in the Eighties. It has since been banned as unsafe and certainly not suitable for large dances.

Alisa Dror, the groom's mother, said: "I can't understand how such a thing, a construction blunder, can happen in our country. It's terrible. It is people's lives we are talking about."

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001