Sawt Falasteen - Death toll reaches six in French building collapse

More than 24 hours after an explosion at the apartment building, where residents reported a strong smell of gas.

Dozens of civil defence staff, using drones, heat sensors and sniffer dogs, kept working through the debris, where a fire still smouldered.

Housing Minister Olivier Klein said at the scene earlier Monday that four bodies had been found. But within hours the emergency services announced that rescue workers had found a fifth and then a sixth victim.

"Work continues to identify," the victims, investigators from the prosecutor's office said in an evening statement.

Marseille's deputy mayor Yannick Ohanessian said earlier that rescue workers hoped to find survivors.

But the fire under the rubble has made it hard for the dogs to detect survivors or bodies.

Firefighter Adrien Schaller described painstaking work.

"The heart of the blaze is deep underneath and hard to reach with the hoses. And we can't spray too much water to avoid creating a sort of mud," he said.

- 'Race against the clock' -

Rescue workers were clearing away most of the rubble with an excavator, he said, stopping as soon as they spotted an air pocket to continue the work by hand.

"It's a race against the clock," he said.

Five people in an adjacent property sustained minor injuries in the blast and collapse, which occurred around 12:40 am on Sunday.

Saveria Mosnier, who lives on a street near the site in the La Plaine neighbourhood, said she was sleeping when a "huge blast... shook the room".

"I was shocked awake as if I had been dreaming," she told AFP.

"We very quickly smelled a strong gas odour that hung around, we could still smell it this morning."

- 'Afraid' -

Two neighbouring buildings were severely damaged, and one collapsed during the day without injuring any rescuers.

Almost 200 residents were evacuated from the area.

"A lot of families in the neighbourhood are afraid," said Arnaud Dupleix, the president of a parents' association at the nearby Tivoli elementary school.

City prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation.

In 2018, eight people were killed in Marseille when two dilapidated buildings in the working-class district of Noailles caved in.

That disaster cast a spotlight on the city's housing standards, with aid groups saying 40,000 people were living in shoddy structures.

"There was no danger notice for this building, and it is not in a neighbourhood identified as having substandard housing," said Christophe Mirmand, prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhone region.

R.Shaban--SF-PST