RIGA (Reuters) – Rescue workers late yesterday stopped searching the rubble of a supermarket collapse that killed at least 54 people in a disaster that Latvia’s president called “murder.”
The search in the ruins of Riga’s Maxima store was aborted after part of a roof which had remained intact since the Thursday disaster fell in at around 1600 GMT yesterday.
Other parts of the ruins were also deemed unstable, making further rescue efforts too dangerous.
“After consultations with specialists we have understood that further presence of rescue workers at this scene endangers their lives,” state secretary of the Interior Ministry Ilze Petersone-Godmane told a news briefing.
Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis announced three days of mourning from yesterday for the victims of the tragedy, in which scores of shoppers were trapped under rubble.
“This is a case which should be clearly named, that it is a murder of an enourmous amount of defenceless people,” the President Andris Berzins said in a television interview.
