PALMA, Spain: Spanish fire crews picked through the wreckage of a beachfront restaurant on the holiday island of Mallorca on Friday (May 24), searching for clues after it partially collapsed, killing four people and injuring 16.
Authorities, who declared three days of mourning, gave no immediate indication of the cause but a fire official said the “excessive weight” of a crowd in the building was most likely to blame.
Those killed were two German women, aged 20 and 30, a 44-year-old Senegalese man and a 23-year-old Spanish woman who worked at the venue, a police spokesman said.
The packed two-storey building collapsed late on Thursday afternoon in a busy tourist area of Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Mediterranean island.
The tourist season is already in full swing in the Balearic Islands, which also includes Ibiza and Menorca.
Firefighters were deployed in numbers, ambulances rushed victims to hospital and the street was sealed off by police to allow rescue teams to work, an AFP journalist saw.
Of the 16 people who were injured, eight remain in hospital, all of them Dutch nationals, Palma de Mallorca mayor Antonio Jimenez told reporters after observing a minute of silence for the victims.
“The seriously injured are out of danger,” he added.
