By Aleksandar Vasovic
NOVI SAD, Serbia (Reuters) -At least 11 people were killed and three hospitalised on Friday when a roof collapsed at the entrance to a railway station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, the interior minister said.
Emergency services used two large diggers into the evening to help free two women who had been trapped under the rubble. They were in critical condition, said Vesna Turkulov, the head of the Vojvodina medical centre where the women were taken.
“It is an extremely difficult rescue operation that will last for several more hours. We have around 80 rescuers from several towns working and heavy machinery,” Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said in a televised statement.
In a visit to the site later, he told Pink TV that the death toll may rise.
N1 news channel said train departures had been halted from the station, which lies about 70 km (40 miles) northwest of the capital, Belgrade.
“This is a black Friday for all of Serbia and Novi Sad,” Prime Minister Milos Vucevic told reporters. “Regardless of the fact that this building was constructed 1964, we will insist that those responsible for this tragedy are identified.”
N1 said the building’s reconstruction had been completed this summer, but that the part of the roof which collapsed had not been part of the reconstruction.
(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac;Editing by Edward McAllister, Mark Potter and Helen Popper)
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