Rescue crews searched the rubble of a luxury hotel in Havana on Sunday with more than a dozen people still missing two days after a blast that tore off its facade and killed at least 27 people.
The Hotel Saratoga, a 96-room property in the Old Havana area of Cuba’s capital, was in the final stages of renovation work when an apparent gas leak produced a massive explosion on Friday.
The blast buried workers inside and passersby outside under concrete and twisted metal. The explosion came in the late morning when the streets and plaza in front of the stately hotel would have been full of pedestrians.
No survivors were found in the upper floors of the hotel and rescuers said they were concentrating their efforts on the debris filling the two-level basement of the neoclassical building.
Dr Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of hospital services at the Ministry of Health, raised the death toll to 27 on Saturday evening, with 81 people injured. The dead included four children and a pregnant woman. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Twitter that a Spanish tourist was among the dead and that another Spaniard was seriously injured.
