An elderly man has been killed and a dozen people are missing after a ten-storey building housing a hotel collapsed in the Argentine seaside resort of Villa Gesell, local authorities and media reported.
“The incident occurred at approximately 1:00 am, when the 10-storey building where the Dubrovnik Hotel was located (…) collapsed,” the municipality of Villa Gesell, 350 kilometres south of Buenos Aires on the Atlantic coast said in a statement.
Javier Alonso, the provincial security minister, said that rescuers recovered the body of an 89-year-old man and that an injured woman had been taken to hospital.
About 300 rescue workers, using drones and sniffer dogs, were searching the rubble for survivors.
Mr Alonso told reporters “between nine and 11 others” could have been in the building at the time, an estimate also given by the city’s mayor, Gustavo Barrera.
The cause of the building’s collapse is not yet known.
The municipality said that work was being carried out at the hotel “clandestinely” and that it had already been halted by the authorities in August.
The foreman and three bricklayers were detained for questioning.