Bodies of two men and two women found in rubble, with rescuers expecting to find more

The bodies of two men and two women have been discovered in the rubble of two dilapidated buildings that collapsed in the centre of Marseille on Monday.

“We are still looking at there being between five and eight victims; people of whom we have no news,” the city prosecutor, Xavier Tarabeux said.

The French interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said the rescue operation was “meticulous and delicate”, much of which had to be carried out by hand. “The searchers have found some survival pockets, so there is perhaps hope there may be people still alive,” he added.

About 80 firefighters were combing through the wreckage. A political row is brewing over the condition of the two buildings, as officials revealed that about 6,000 properties in Marseille were in a dilapidated state.

Castaner said: “I am here to accompany the men and women trying to save lives. The polemic can come later, the investigation now. Everyone is trying to save lives. That is the urgency. For as long as there is hope, the fire service will continue to fight to save lives.”

The minister said the building that was occupied, No 65 rue d’Aubagne, had undergone a “technical inspection” on 18 October. While concerns about its state were raised, there was no decision to evacuate it.

Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, said: “Teams have worked through the night in difficult conditions. It’s been raining so it’s complicated. The one positive thing is that they have found potential breathing spaces.”

No 63 was derelict and supposedly empty but may have been occupied by squatters. It is thought to have fallen first, pulling down No 65, which was occupied, and partially damaging No 67, which fire services were forced to pull down entirely.

“The risk is that it’s a house of cards. It was a dilapidated building, but there were owners and tenants there. It wasn’t a slum,” Muselier said.

The buildings gave way after 9am on Monday. Throughout the night, emergency services combed through the 15-metre-deep rubble left by the collapse.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police and firefighters begin clearance work at the site where two buildings collapsed in Marseille on Monday. Photograph: Gérard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

Working all night, search teams removed parts of the building from the road, under which they found a crushed car.

Muselier said that among the missing was a woman who had failed to collect her daughter from school and another woman who rarely left her home in the building.

Sophie, a 25-year-old philosophy student, who was living in one of the destroyed buildings, had stayed with her parents the night before the collapse. “For several days the doors to several flats wouldn’t close, or had difficulty closing, including mine. I was afraid of being imprisoned in my home with the door blocked,” she told AFP.

At No 65 rue d’Aubagne, nine of the 10 apartments were occupied.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Firefighters remove rubble at the site where two buildings collapsed on Monday in Marseille, southern France. Photograph: Loic Aedo/AFP/Getty Images

Mark Mason, a retired college lecturer who owned a flat in No 63 rue d’Aubagne, with a French friend, Laurence Coriat, said their property was subject to a compulsory purchase order in 2012 after the building was inspected and officials deemed it unsafe. The floor of a first-floor apartment had collapsed and chunks of masonry were falling from the facade, they said.

“Between 2006 and 2012 it got worse,” Coriat said. “We had a report done that said the building was constructed on sand and the foundations were not good.”

Mason, who has since moved to London, said: “The problems started in 2006 when great cracks appeared in the outside walls to the point we had to have wooden frames fitted to support the windows.

“In the end, we were the only owners living in the building. We were forced to sell because there was too much work to be done. The town hall said they were going to buy up all the flats, do up the building and renovate the whole area. That was in 2012.”

The local housing authority, Marseille Habitat, told the local online newspaper Marsactu it had sought to declare the building dilapidated in 2012 in order to carry out a programme of “voluntary purchases”. It said it acquired the building in 2017 and carried out limited work to stop blocks of masonry falling from the facade.

“The danger posed by No 63, owned by the city of Marseille, has been known for years,” said the campaign group A City Centre for All in a statement. “It’s the third derelict building in the first arrondissement that has collapsed in five years.”

In a statement, Marseille city council admitted that No 63 had been subject to a “danger notice” in 2008 and was “boarded up and secured to stop access”.