Apartment Building in Italy Collapses; 21 Die

At least 21 people were killed and nearly 20 others were feared dead in the collapse today of most of a six-story apartment building in this southern Italian town.

Rescue workers kept digging through concrete rubble, but civil defense officials held out slight hope of finding survivors.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any hope of finding them alive,” the civil protection minister, Giuseppe Zamberletti, told reporters after talking with rescue officials.

Police and firemen rescued 11 people, nine of them injured.

Police said a large section of the building collapsed “like a card castle” at 4:15 a.m. while most of its estimated 90 residents were asleep.

The state-run RAI television said rescue workers were using heat sensors to locate the people still trapped. The sensors detect the body warmth of the buried victims.

It was not immediately known what caused the 30-year-old structure to collapse. Building residents were quoted by Italian news agencies as saying the foundations had been weakened by water seepage from recent days of torrential rain marking Italy’s severest winter in 29 years.