Moscow swimming pool roof collapses: 26 killed
Rescuers used cranes and other heavy machinery to pull bodies out of the twisted metal and slabs of concrete that fell on an indoor swimming pool when the dome caved in Saturday evening.
Semi-naked survivors fled for their lives into the freezing cold. Another person later died in hospital.
Russia's Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said 110 people had been hospitalized, four of them in serious condition.
A Moscow police spokesman told AFP by telephone that 26 people had died in the tragedy.
Russia's Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu separately told reporters that 17 people were presumed missing because their clothes were found in lockers but had not been located yet. He feared the death toll was likely to rise.
Shoigu lashed out at the hasty construction work in Moscow in recent years that has seen many buildings sprout up but then quickly crumble.
"It is time to do away with this nonsense. We have to get (construction work) under control," Shoigu said.
He said 49 people had been rescued from the ruins of the pool's roof. Earlier reports said hundreds may have been in the area when the dome caved in.
Around 1,000 rescuers dug through rubble, periodically stopping their gruesome work to listen for voices below.
"Every half an hour, we have a minute of silence so that we can hear where the voices are coming from," one rescue worker told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Moscow police opened a criminal inquiry into the builders of the new-age structure on the southeastern outskirts of Moscow. Officials said the site had used labourers from Turkey -- who often come to the Russia capital to work on construction sites.
Survivors screaming with pain dug themselves out of the ruins of the building and pleaded for any information about the fate of their friends and loved ones they had just seen moments earlier.
"There was a very loud noise ... and then there was a silence and then everyone starting running for safety. The entire roof caved in," one worker at the exclusive Transvaal Park told Channel One television.
Hundreds of people ran out onto the streets naked or in swimming costumes into a glacial night temperature of minus 15 degrees Celsius (minus nine Fahrenheit.)
"I came out naked. Some people threw some clothes on me," one dazed young man told TVTs television.
"I have a friend who cannot find his son and his wife," he added.
One woman who rushed to the scene was gnawing at her scarf in desperation as she told AFP that her son was swimming in the pool at the time of the accident.
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