Toll Rises to 88 in Thai Hotel Collapse : Disaster: A U.S. Air Force sergeant is among the dead. Hundreds were injured in the cave-in.

The bodies of 22 people were found in the coffee shop of a collapsed hotel late Saturday, bringing the confirmed death toll in Thailand’s latest man-made disaster to 88, including a member of the U.S. Air Force.

The 134-room Royal Plaza Hotel, advertised as the finest in this provincial capital 130 miles northeast of Bangkok, crashed down Friday into a pile of concrete and twisted steel.

About 350 people were injured, most of them seriously. The hotel collapsed as about 200 people attended meetings, one for provincial teachers and the other for employees of the Shell (Thailand) Co. Ltd.

Police suspect the collapse was related to the addition of three top floors in 1990. Another floor was under construction.

Officials were holding for questioning the hotel owner, architect and an engineer who worked on the project.

At the disaster site, scores of people were still missing.

Searchers tunneled out a cave at the building’s base, trying to reach a woman trapped in the hotel coffee shop.

“I have talked to her over the last two hours,” said Budin Intaratanon, a volunteer worker. “She can’t speak, she just doesn’t have the strength.”

Workers emerged from the tunnel caked with dirt, gasping for air. Others rushed to pour water over them from plastic bottles.

The dead include a U.S. Air Force sergeant, identified by the U.S. Embassy as Raymon Canda, who had been based at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. He was caught under the falling building when he stopped to send a fax.

Master Sgt. Larry H. Crismon of Salt Lake City said Canda was part of a 12-man Air Force team installing telephone lines at the Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base. No others in the group were injured.

The hotel collapse was the latest in a series of urban disasters in the country, including a factory fire that claimed 188 lives in May.