Part of a hotel collapsed in the Chinese city of Suzhou on Monday, killing eight people and leaving rescue workers searching for nine others who are still missing in the ruins, according to the local government.
The collapse of a section of the Siji Kaiyuan Hotel in coastal Jiangsu province happened on Monday afternoon, the Suzhou Municipal Government said in a statement. According to state-run media, the Ministry of Emergency Management sent a team to help with the rescue work.
As of Tuesday, nine people were still missing and 14 had been rescued.
The cause of the collapse was under investigation, state-run Xinhua news agency said. Chinese media published photographs of rescue workers combing through rubble in the search for survivors.
The Siji Kaiyuan is a budget hotel that opened in 2018. The section that collapsed was three stories tall while an online booking site said the hotel had 54 rooms.