A British family including a one-year-old child are believed to be among the scores of people missing after a beachfront building partially collapsed in Miami.
So far four people have been confirmed dead and 159 people are still unaccounted for after the 12-storey building Champlain Towers South Condo, in Surfside fell to the ground on Thursday.
Bhavna Patel, 38, her 42-year-old husband Vishal Patel and their one-year-old daughter Aishani Patel are yet to be found, a relative confirmed to Sky News.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that almost a third of the missing are foreigners, while US President Joe Biden has approved a state of emergency for Florida following the tragedy.
Relatives of Paraguay's first lady are among around a dozen confirmed to be missing in the disaster.
City officials fear the worst after part of the building suddenly 'pancaked' in the small hours of Thursday morning as most inhabitants slept.
The building crumbled at 1.30am local time, destroying more than 70 of the block’s 136 apartments.
Rescue workers are working hard with the help of sniffer dogs in perilous conditions to look for survivors.
Search teams detected sounds of banging and other noises but no voices coming from the mounds of debris hours after a large
section of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, a barrier island town across Biscayne Bay from the city, crumbled to the ground, authorities said.
Footage captured by a security camera nearby showed an entire side of the building crumbling in two sections, one after the other, throwing up clouds of dust at about 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) on Thursday.
What caused the 40-year-old high-rise to cave in within seconds was not immediately known, although local officials said the 12-storey tower was undergoing roof construction and other repairs.
Among those rescued was a trapped a child, located in the rubble a whole seven hours after the collapse.
The child was located by a rescue dog and emergency teams believe the youngster was with the parents, who are dead.
Frank Rollason, of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, said: “It’s bad.”
