Toll Rises to 52 in Building Collapse

The discovery of bodies near the stairwell of a collapsed apartment building in southern Italy pushed the death toll to 52 in the nation’s worst such disaster in decades. Ten people were still missing after Thursday’s early morning disaster. The number of victims found in the area where the building’s stairwell used to be “makes us think that those people were running downstairs to get out of the building, evidently warned by the shaking,” said Luigi Panarese, a fire department official in Foggia, 70 miles northeast of Naples. Survivors say the building shook for two or three minutes before it fell, giving some people time to run door to door to alert neighbors. Sixteen people escaped or were rescued.