Swiss firefighters killed when burning car park collapses

GRETZENBACH, Switzerland - Seven Swiss fire-fighters are presumed dead after they were trapped under the collapsed roof of a burning underground car park.

Rescuers scrambled frantically through the smoking rubble to locate the seven firefighters, trapped in a 20-centimetre-high chamber between the floor and the collapsed ceiling of a car park in the northern Swiss town of Gretzenbach.

They drilled small tunnels into the debris to establish contact but found only the lifeless bodies of the seven who had been trapped since early morning, a police spokesman said on Saturday.

"We can see them but we can't get them out. There is no sign of life," he said.

All seven were thought to have been crushed or suffocated. It was the worst accident in Switzerland involving firefighters in memory, the spokesman said.

The fire broke out in the morning in a residential car park in Gretzenbach, between the cities of Basel and Zurich.

The town fire department sent 11 fire-fighters into the blaze when the car park's concrete roof collapsed, police said.

Three were able to get out and one was rescued and taken to hospital for smoke inhalation, the police statement said.

Rescuers were able to maintain radio contact with some of the trapped men for several hours after the collapse. But hopes for their rescue began to fade when radio contact broke off.

- REUTERS